


The winds of the North

by CamilleDuDemon



Series: Following the Wind [1]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Romance, Canon Disabled Character, Cultural Differences, Domestic elements, Eventual Smut, F/M, Healers, Illnesses, Touch-Starved Ivar, foresight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 18:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12018645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamilleDuDemon/pseuds/CamilleDuDemon
Summary: After the shipwreck that takes Ragnar Lothbrok and his son on the coasts of Wessex, the young healer Hilda finds Ivar on the shore and, without thinking about it twice, she decides to save his life. Bad omens follow her reckless action, but she's determined to prove the fate wrong while struggling to find her place in a family where being a common healer isn't easy as it seems.





	1. The stranger that came from the sea

**Author's Note:**

> If you're reading this, know that I love you already.  
> This is my first ever F/M work and I don't know how I have to feel about it. It doesn't matter, by the way, doesn't it? 
> 
> It happened that I fell in love with Ivar the Boneless and this fanfiction is my attempt to portray him in a way I really love to see him: vulnerable, lonely, ill. All right, I'm a slut for Ivar's suffering, that's it. As much as I love him, I can't help but think about how much pain suits him.
> 
> Feedbacks are really appreciated.  
> Thank you so much for reading this, anonymous reader. You have my love and my gratitude <3

I.

 

Ælfrith’s eyes were piercing, as black as the darkest depths of the forest, surely looking much more mature than her actual eleven years. 

“You shouldn't have done it, Hilda. Mother won’t be pleased.”

Hilda shook her head. Her long hair had slipped from the intricate braid she had tied in the morning and her hands were frantically working with a bone carved mortar to crush some leaves into a paste.

“Well, I can't see mother here”, she snapped. 

Ælfrith gave her a scolding look, as if she was in some kind of charge in spite of her young age. 

“I saw him in the fire, sister! He’s not to bring any good!”, she finally yelled, eyeing at the writhing figure slumped on a cot, delirious with fever and with his skin burning red from the sun.

Milthryd was looking at him mesmerized, her little, nervous fingers ruffling the dirty dress of her wooden doll. Her green eyes darted on her sister’s, full of stars and questions.

“Who’s this boy, Hildy? Why is he bad?”

Hilda let out a small groan.

“He is  _ not bad,  _ Mil. Elfry is just babbling nonsense”, she hissed, pressing a finger down into the paste and nodding to herself. “Is the cold water ready, Elf?”, she asked. Her voice was still cold, angry, and a hint of worry made it higher pitched than the usual.

The younger girl shook her head, gaining a frown from her elder sister.

“Why can't you just do what you're told, sister?! Go, make a ice bath! I don't care about what you think, he’s not gonna die because of your incompetence while I’m tending to him!”

Finally, as if she was bitten by a snake in the calves, Ælfrith stormed out of the small room with furious tears burning in the corner of her eyes.

Milthryd outstretched her fingers and collected a drop of cold sweat running down the stranger’s cheek.

“He's burning”, she stated. Hilda gave her a small smile, adding some powdered herbs to her mixture from a jar.

“That's why Elfry is making an ice bath for him: cold water helps getting the fever down...plus, the sun had burned his skin, this paste I’m making is gonna help him heal”, she said. The child nodded. Their mother was sure that Milthryd was simple, too simple to even make a good healer out of her, but Hilda wasn't one to let go on hopes that easily so she took any chance to teach her something new. If it wasn't for her, the young woman was sure their mother would have long forgotten about her youngest daughter, letting her consume her childhood in loneliness and rejection.

Milthryd was born when they were still living with the German Saxons, in a small farm that was built too close to the woods to be really productive, and their mother had always said that she was as simple as the germans, whom she believed to be far more similar to the goats than to real human beings. 

At least, the germans were more than happy to have their service as healers and, in spite of their mother's bad opinion about them, they always paid with the small amount of food, livestock and goods their land could provide.

Hilda poured some water in a bowl and handed it to her sister.

“Take a rug and sponge his forehead while we wait for the ice bath, would you?”

The child nodded.

Finally, Hilda took a moment to breath, trying to sort out the events that had lead her to take care of a stranger in her own house, uncaring about the dangers she could have make her family endure .

She was collecting some herbs on a cliff when she had seen the young man lying on the beach, his face almost lapped by the forceful waves pushed by the early morning wind. 

She had rushed to him, leaving all of her work behind, eager to find him alive and finally get to make herself useful again: they had moved from the German lands almost a year before, but the lack of trust in the people of Wessex held them in a state of inactivity. Christians weren't fond of healers, she had learnt. Nor they were fond of women, let alone if they weren't married and used to live together.

When she had finally reached him, she had found out he was surprisingly breathing: a ragged breath, weakened by all the water he had surely gulped down, yet still a breath. All around him laid the miserable remnants of a shipwreck, but no other person could be seen. Without thinking about it twice, Hilda had lifted his body on her shoulders and carried him home. It had taken her twice the time and all her muscles screamed and kicked, but she was a healer:  _ what kind of healer leaves a young man to die on a beach without doing her best to keep him alive first? _

“Sister, I need help!”

Ælfrith’s voice interrupted the frenzied flowing of her thoughts and Hilda rushed to help her dragging a wooden tub inside the room.

Milthryd was still sponging the stranger's forehead as if she was tending to one of her dolls.

“Thanks for your help, Mil”, the eldest sister smiled, handing the youngest one a large jar, “now get to the hearth and mix these herbs with water, please.”

The girl nodded and toddled off with a big smile on her face. She was helping, for once, and pride made her eyes shine.

Undressing the stranger was difficult and sometimes he whined in protest but when Hilda was finally able to slip him out of his trousers she found out his legs looked athrophied and crooked.

Ælfrith gave them an inquiring look.

“Do you think he can move them?”, she asked. Hilda merely shook her head.

“Help me. He's heavy”, she said.

When the stranger’s skin touched the ice-cold surface of the water, he let out a choked cry, weakly trying to avoid its deathly embrace. The eldest sister shushed him, whispering comforting words to his ears.

“Please”, she cooed, “don't be difficult. The fever is high and this is the only way to keep it at bay, for now…”

The stranger whimpered. The burns on his face seemed less dangerous, now that she could take a closer look, but the fever had to be treated and there was a large gash on his head that she hadn't noticed yet. 

Gently stroking his chest to calm him down, Hilda could feel his heart slamming furiously against his sternum, fueled by fever and fear.

“Is the temperature lowering?”, Ælfrith asked, her head tilted. 

Hilda was still angry at her, so the answer came out harsher than she intended.

“Not yet. Let the water do its work.”

It was clear that her younger sister had something to say, but somehow she managed to keep it to herself, busying herself with bringing towels to dry the stranger up instead.

It took some time to the water to bring the fever down and when Hilda and Ælfrith placed him in the cot the stranger was still delirious. When he cracked his eyes open for a moment, Hilda noticed they were blue, the bluest blue she had ever seen in that part of the world. Milthryd finally brought the herbs she had infused, then sat down watching her sisters cleaning the wound on the stranger's head, applying a bandage, then smearing a strong smelling paste on his scorched skin.

“He has weird hair”, she finally stated, pointing her finger to his head. 

Hilda nodded. No man she had seen ever since they got to Wessex wore a haircut like that. She glanced at Ælfrith and her sister bit her lower lip.

“He’s a northman”, she stated. 

“Did the flames tell you that?”

The younger girl shook her head.

“No. Not when I saw him. I knew Northmen were coming a long ago, sister...mother knew it too.”

Since she was born, Ælfrith had been gifted by the Goddess with the power of foreseeing. Their mother had spent her whole pregnancy in elation, waiting for her second daughter to come into the world like a Christian waiting for his resurrected Christ to walk the earth again. Hilda scoffed under her breath remembering that time. She was just a kid and her mother never stopped talking about her unborn sister, about the powers she would have had, about how far her eyes would have been able to see. Hilda had felt a loneliness in her bones she had never felt before. She had felt useless and common, so different from that mother who seemed to come from another world, that mother who walked among the humans as if she was some kind of queen trapped in the body of a mortal. They were living in Sicily, back then, and Ælfrith was born with the irrefutable features of a Moor, black hair and even darker eyes.

“Seems like I was the only one who didn't know anything”, she finally said, letting some anger harden her soft features.

Ælfrith let out a sigh.

“No, you knew it. I heard you tossing and turning in your sleep, some nights ago...you were dreaming. You just don't want to accept what you can see in your sleep.”

Hilda shook her head. The stranger made some pitiful, strangled noises and she placed a comforting hand on his sweaty chest.

“Can you please hand me the herbal tea Mil had made? It should have cooled down, now.”

Her sister poured some mixture in a cup. 

“Do you remember his language? It has been a long time…”, she said, giving her the cup and crossing her bony arms on her flat chest. 

Hilda shrugged. 

“Sometimes mother and I still speak it, when se are alone in the woods to pick up herbs. It’s a way to keep my father alive.”

Hilda couldn't remember much of him, though. He was a strong, tall man, with long hair and a soft beard. He wasn't really good at speaking english, so he had taught her daughter his own language.

She cleared her throat, trying to recall the harsh sound she was so accustomed to when she was a child, then spoke softly.

“Can you hear me?”, she whispered at the stranger's ear. His eyelids fluttered. He had understood.

The stranger gave her a pitiful, pained look.

“Mother…”, he moaned.

Hilda’s heart clenched at the sight. His sweaty face looked outmostly boyish, all big eyes and plush lips. His features looked somehow both soft and sharp, hardened by the pain his deformed legs had surely caused him.

Running her fingers through his hair like she imagined a mother would have done, she asked him to take a sip of the herbal infusion. It was a special blend she had learnt how to make from an old arabic trader, specifically made to control fever-induced deliriums. He took a small sigh, then coughed. Hilda gently patted him between his shoulder blades.

“Slow”, she scolded. Then continued stroking his back until he had emptied the cup.

When the stranger finally fell back into his uneasy slumber, Hilda collapsed on a chair, allowing her sore muscles to rest.

“Why do you think he’s bad, Elf? He’s just a young, crippled man. Maybe he’s younger than me, who knows?”

Ælfrith shook her head, slipping limply on a chair. Her black eyes looked almost a thousand years old.

“He will bring an army, sister. One day, he will bring rage and blood upon this realm... _ and it was you who saved his life.” _

Hilda gave him another look. How could her sister’s words be true, now that he was so vulnerable? Yet, Ælfrith’s prophecies - even the earliest ones, when she couldn't be older than six - had never turned out wrong. The young woman clenched her jaw.

“So you're suggesting that it would be my fault, if the things you saw really happened…”

Elf sighed loudly in response.

As much as it burned to admit her younger sister was right, Hilda had had a bad dream some nights before, a dream of death and blood and destruction. In her nightmare, she was standing in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by agonizing screams and corpses, with her hands soaked in slimy crimson and dirt.

“You saw it, didn't you, Hildy? The blood. The battlefield…”

“Yes”, she only said, tightening her jaw.

Still, she didn't feel responsible for the things that were to come.

She was a healer, after all. And a healer's job was to save people...no matter about bad omens and prophecies.

  
  
  


She was dreaming.

She was standing in the biggest grass field she had ever seen, her face warmed by the gentle rays of the summer sun. It looked just like Eire...or, at least, it looked like how her mother had described Eire to her when she was just a child. 

A strong hand gripped her shoulder and she turned quickly, startled.

_ “Father?” _

The man smiled. He looked exactly as she remembered him, with his long hair and tattoos all over his arms. When he was died, no one would have taken the burden of burying a Northman purposefully, so Hilda and her mother had had to do that by themselves. The only things she could remember of that night were her mother’s heartbroken sobs and her beautiful dress covered in dirt and mud.

_ “My sweet child. I left you a girl, I met you again as a woman…” _ , he softly spoke. 

Hilda tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth remained still. She was happy to see him, of course, but as her mother loved to say  _ ‘if a ghost knocks at your door, you better run, for it’s surely bad news coming for you’. _

Her father gently stroked her hair.

_ “What are you doing, here, father? Are you here to reprimand me for having saved some of your kin?” _

The man chuckled under his breath. His calloused finger rested on her daughter’s forehead, then he booped her nose playfully, watching her wince and stifle a sneeze.

_ “Don’t always believe in what you mother tells you, my child. I don’t bring bad news.” _

The young woman let out a relieved sigh.

_ “Why didn’t you come to me before, if there’s nothing to be afraid of?” _ , she questioned.

He shook his head.

_ “This doesn’t mean that I’m not here to tell you something very important, my sweet daughter. You have to follow the wind, my child, can you understand? You time is almost come to go back where you belong...to go back home. Follow the winds of the north, and let them carry you home” _ , he whispered, while his features started melting into the stranger’s, with his big blue eyes staring at her with such an intensity that all the grass all around them could have started burning instantly.

Hilda let out a strangled, surprised yelp, and it was only thanks to someone tugging insistently at her sleeve that she could manage to wake up without screaming.

Milthryd.

Her little sister tugged at her sleeve again.

“Will you come to bed anytime soon?”, she asked finally, trying her best to keep it as quiet as possible.

Hilda smiled, shaking her head.

“I have to take care of him”, she explained, gesturing towards the stranger. “I can’t come to bed...not tonight, at least. Why aren’t you sleeping, bird? You want me to tell you a story?”

The girl shook her head vehemently.

“I don’t want to sleep with Elfry anymore. She mutters in her sleep! I tried to wake her up, but she told me to go away…”, she complained. She looked on the verge of tears.

Hilda sighed, picking her up and letting her sit on her lap.

“She didn’t mean to scare you, Mil. You know that she’s special...she can listen to the Goddess whispers and, sometimes, the Goddess lets her talk to her too. That’s what she was doing, Mil. She’s just like our mother…”

Milthryd tangled her small fingers to her sister’s messy hair.

“Is that why mother loves her more than she loves me?”, she whispered.

Hilda froze for a moment, unsure about what to say. It was undoubtedly true that her mother had a favorite daughter, but who could have possibly had the nerve to spill the beans in front of a four years old?

“Mother doesn’t love her more than she loves you, bird. mother loves all of us, regardless of the gift the Goddess gave us when we were born”, she stated.

Her youngest sister smiled tentatively.

“Do you know what my gift is, Hidy?”

“Goodness, Mil. the Goddess gifted you with goodness and a kind heart. she gifted you with the best that she had”, she said, kissing her sandy-blond hair. Milthrid smelled of freshly cut grass and burning wood and Hilda couldn’t remember a time where her mother had held her like that. It had always been up to her to take care of that little girl, daughter of the german farmer who had hosted them in his modest farm when they were wandering around those foreign lands in search of a place where to live. Their mother had delivered her quickly on a late spring night and, just as quickly, she had forgotten about her presence. When the good farmer had died, killed by some bandits while on the road to sell a couple of cows in a market, her mother had finally decided it was time to follow the wind again…and the wind had led them to King Ecbert’s lands.

“I want to sleep here”, Mil chirped, making herself more comfortable on her sister’s thighs.

Hilda let out a deep sigh.

“Are you going to sleep in my lap, Mil?”

“I can sleep on the floor…”

“No, you can’t. I don’t want you to, since you have a proper place to sleep. Elfry isn’t gonna harm you...nor she wants to.”

The child pouted but, obediently, she did what she was told.

The stranger mumbled something unintelligible under his ragged breath and Hilda sighed again, gently scratching his scalp to make him aware that he was not alone.

Her father had told her to follow the winds of the north, but what was he really meaning? It was her mother the one obsessed with moving,  _ following the wind _ , not her. It was her mother who dragged her daughters from a place to the other, searching for a peace she couldn’t find anywhere. Maybe Wessex could be their home, after all: it was where her father and mother had met, where she was born... _ still, her dead father had suggested otherwise. _

The young woman shook her head. It wasn’t the right time to indulge into such thoughts, not with her mother gone and an ill, young man to take care of alongside the house and her little sisters.

“Are you really that dangerous, Northman?”, she asked. The stranger only moaned, and she placed a wet cloth on his forehead.

Outside, the wind howled, filling the room with its salty scent of sea and unknown.

  
  
  
  
  



	2. When the wind picks up

II.

 

The stranger spent four days sleeping, occasionally awaking just to drink the herbs Hilda gave him and moaning some unintelligible mutterings whenever she dared to leave his side.

Sometimes he called his mother while restlessly tossing and turning in his sleep but, thanks to Hilda’s skills, the worst was almost over. His burnt skin was healing faster than she had thought and the gash on his head - cleaned and bandaged anew every day - didn’t seem to be infected.

On the fifth day, when the bright light of the morning sun hit his shut eyelids, he cracked his eyes open, groaning with the pounding headache hammering in his skull.

Even before he could squint to focus on the surroundings, he felt his stomach knotting and threw up a stream of white foam on the wooden floor.

_ “You’re awake…”  _

  
  
  


Ivar gulped down some foul tasting saliva before looking up.

A young woman was towering over his cot, a broom in her hand.

“Where am I?”, he croaked. His throat felt as dry as sand. Deep down, he knew there should have been more important matters to discuss, but his mind was still too foggy to properly work.

The young woman smiled softly. Her hair was knotted on the top of her head into an intricate bun, glowing bright brown in the sun coming from the small window above.

“You’re in Wessex, stranger”, she spoke. “I found you half-drowned on the beach. You were ill and you slept four days straight... _ more or less _ . I’m a healer, by the way, you were really lucky I found you.”

Ivar shivered at the thought of the water in his lungs, so cold it could actually freeze his insides. His attempt to reemerge when he had sunk like a stone thrown in a pond had been desperate, feral, and it had gotten his body on the verge of tearing apart in exhaustion...still, he couldn’t remember how he had been able to drag himself on the shore, crawling enough away from the waves  to survive.

“How can you speak my language?”, he asked. His voice felt distant, grating like the flat croaking of a frog. His stomach growled, and Ivar could feel another gush of vomit coming from the bottom of his throat.

She let out a long sigh.

“It’s a long story...and I think it’s not the best moment to tell it”, she said, leaving the broom and grabbing a large wooden bowl instead.

Ivar knitted his brows but when he had to throw up again she was quick to place it under his chin, though.

She was still smiling, when she put the bowl on the floor beside his cot.

He groaned, propping himself on his elbows and grimacing finding out how hard it was in his weakened state.

The healer placed a hand on his forehead, then shook her head.

“You’re still feverish...I’m gonna make you some herbs”, she said, as casually as she was only thinking it out loud. “If you’d have to vomit again, do it in the bowl, please.”

Ivar would have gripped her by the dress before she could storm away, but even his hands felt too sore to move quickly enough.

The whole place smelled of herbs and flower, and it made him feel even dizzier.

Where did he end up? He wondered. 

His whole body hurt.

_ Where was Ragnar? Was he still alive? And what did it happen to all the others who had agreed to sail with him? Were they floating in the sea, only good for feeding the fishes?  _

The thought of their swollen bodies eaten bit by bit by such revolting creatures made him sick and he felt the urge to throw up again.  

He had to find his father.  _ The great Ragnar Lothbrok couldn’t have perished in a stupid shipwreck _ , he thought, before falling again into his dreamless slumber.

When Hilda came back with a cup of herbs, the stranger was already soundly asleep. She thought of waking him up, but somehow she was sure that letting him sleep would have been the best choice.

Ælfrith came in, carrying with her the small amount of milk their goats were able to give them.

“I know he doesn’t really look like a danger when he’s asleep, sister, but he will eventually heal...he’s deadly, Hild”, she whispered. “His wrath is deadly.”

Her plump lips were pursed in a thin line.

Hilda scratched nervously the back of her neck.

“Are you sure it was him, Elf? I mean...I took a closer look to his legs and there’s no way he can move them. Actually, I don’t even know if and how he’s able to drag himself around without any help...maybe he crawls, like the blacksmith's kid back in the german lands...his arms look strong enough…”, she absentmindedly said, chewing at her thumbnail.

“Don’t underestimate him, sister, he’s not like the other cripples we had met.”

The ominous prophecy in her sister’s words made the room fall silent for a while.

To Hilda, the young man she was looking at was harmless, someone she was taking care of...but she was aware that Ælfrith was right. Something in the bright blue of his eyes told her the same story.

“As soon as he feels better, I promise you we’re sending him back where he comes from. We’ll find a trading ship ready to sail north and---”

Ælfrith interrupted her, giving her a faint smile.

“Are you sure that it will be that easy?”

Hilda frowned. Sometimes she couldn’t keep up with her, for she could see things other people could only vaguely assume.

“Why shouldn’t it be? Is there anything you didn’t tell me?”

“I don’t know yet”, she said, pouring herself some warm milk.  _ “Even the Goddess herself seems uncertain of what’s about to come, from time to time.” _

  
  
  
  


“Milthryd! What is this goat doing in our house? It’s not her place, you know it very well!”

It was late in the afternoon. Hilda was bringing some beets and carrots from the small orchard and Milthryd was babbling something to their guest, gesturing towards the goat she had brought inside. She looked really busy in her one-sided conversation, so she squealed in awe when she saw her sister enter the room, running towards her with a big grin on her face.

“Flower likes him!”, she chirped, poking the small goat on the nose.

Hilda rolled her eyes.

“Take her outside, Mil. We are healers, and healers…”, she let her words fall into silence, encouraging her little sister to continue it for her.

“... _ and healers should always live in a clean place and take a bath whenever it’s possible, especially before and after having taken care of some ill person” _ , she recited. It was the first thing their mother had taught each of her daughters: _always be clean, always clean up._

Christians had their prayers, healers had their ancient sayings.

“Now tell me, bird, do you think that having a goat roaming around can help us keeping this house clean?”

Milthryd shook her little, blonde head.

“No…”

Hilda ruffled her hair fondly. She looked just like her father with her soft, wavy hair, dimples and round chin.

“Bring this goat where she belongs, bird”, she gently ordered.

The stranger had watched their little interlude with wide eyes, not understanding a single word.

“I’m sorry”, Hilda said when her sister was gone, “Milthryd tends to be too friendly with the strangers, sometimes.”

Ivar let out some kind of annoyed huff.

“What did she want?”

The healer waved her hand vaguely.

“She wanted you to meet her favourite goat...and she asked you what your name was.”

Hilda didn’t know why she had felt the need of lying to him, but she had. She could feel his icy stare on her and a shiver ran through her spine.

Ivar was starting to feel sore by his forced immobility and, although he felt definitely better than in the morning, a sharp pain plagued his legs almost constantly. 

_ It was some kind of pain he was very well accustomed to. _

“I have to find my father”, he growled, after a long moment in which they had done nothing except for mutually staring. She knitted her brows when he hastily got rid of the warm blankets covering his naked body  and tried to crawl away.

She bit her lower lip, watching him struggle to use his arms to support the whole weight of his body.

“As far as I know, he could have drowned…”, she said, feeling sincerely sorry for his fate.

Ivar gave her a deadly look.

“He can’t be dead! A man like Ragnar Lothbrok cannot die like that!”, he spat.

Hilda’s eyes widened in shock. She could remember too well what her father used to tell her about Ragnar Lothbrok.  _ He was the man who led the Vikings to the western lands.  _ The young crippled she had saved was the son of a legend.

“Ragnar Lothbrok? Your father is  _ that _ Ragnar Lothbrok?”

The stranger smirked.

His eyes were rimmed with purple shadows, glistening feverishly in the orange sunset.

The young woman shook her head thoughtfully. If his father was really Ragnar Lothbrok that could only mean one thing: if he had survived the shipwreck, then all of the lords of Wessex were looking for him...maybe he was already at the mercy of King Ecbert himself, captured by his soldiers.

“He could be already dead anyway”, she stated then. “Maybe King Ecbert has already captured him and he was already executed…”

“That’s what I have to find out”, he replied through his teeth.

Hilda gave him an unintentionally sassy look.

“And you plan to do it by crawling all around Wessex completely naked, still weakened by a fever. Sounds like a good plan, if you want to reach Valhalla before your time comes”, she sneered.

Ivar lips twitched with fury but, as much as it burned him, she was right: he was too weak even for crawling from his cot to the door, how could he possibly find his father in such a miserable state?

With a loud groan he crawled back to his place.

He was fuming.

“I’m hungry”, he said, pouting like a child.

Hilda wanted so bad to laugh at how much spoiled and reckless he was, but she resisted the urge to do it.

“I was going to cook, in facts. Soup. I’m not sure of what your stomach can hold right now, so I’m going to keep a close eye on you…”

The young man chuckled under his breath. His forehead was beading with sweat.

“I’m not a baby, woman. You don’t have to coddle me.”

“Hilda. My name is Hilda, not woman”, she said.

Ivar frowned. Hilda was a rather common name in Kattegat, several slaves he had met throughout the years were called Hilda. Before he could ask her again why she could speak his language and who had given her a Viking name, she was already gone, humming a tune he was sure he had heard when he was a kid.

He huffed again, frustration gnawing at his liver like a ravenous mouse.

_ How could he just lay there doing nothing while his father was very likely being held captive by the same man who had ordered the slaughter of their people - the slaughter of innocent men, women and children who just wanted to grow farms and live in peace - in cold blood? _

That was one time Ivar swore to the Gods that King Ecbert’s land would have never known peace anymore.

He would have found a way to go back to Kattegat and, once there, he would have planned his revenge against Wessex.

The thought of blood spilling thrilled him, reviving him after days of blurred dullness.

_ Oh, yes, even the solid ground would have oozed blood when his vengeance would have rained upon King Ecbert _ , he thought, curling his lips into a pleased grin.

He could still hear the healer singing from the other room.

  
  
  
  


“Do we really have to do this?”

Hilda glanced at Ælfrith, her beautiful face twisted in a disappointed grimace.

Carefully getting the cauldron off the hearth, she took a spoonful of soup and hummed, satisfied.

“I won’t force you to eat with us, Elf…”, she said. Of course she didn’t want to see her sister eating alone beside the hearth, but she couldn’t force her to change her mind. It was Ælfrith’s choice, not hers. “All right, who put the dried mushrooms in the broth? Was it you, Mil?”

Milthryd gave Hilda the largest of her grins and she praised her by ruffling her hair.

Ælfrith took her full bowl and sat cross legged by the fire.

“I’ll eat here”, she stated stubbornly.

Hilda rolled her eyes.

“We’re a family, Elf. We should stick together…”

“But he’s not part of our family!”, she snapped, giving the stranger an angry glance from across the room. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do! And I don’t like it!”

“But you don’t know him, as much as I don’t either! Why are you letting your fears win over anything else? This is not right...not for someone who owns the same gift as you. Where did the child I took with me in the woods to pick up herbs go?”, she whispered, her bright eyes clouded with nostalgia.

She had loved Ælfrith since she had seen her pitch black eyes for the first time, so she had sworn to protect her from the fate her mother had foreseen for her as much as she could. She would have been the most powerful seeress the world had ever known, but Hilda knew better that such a great power would have brough her undeniable sufferings. Her mother had let her win, at first, entrusting her with the responsibility to teach her younger sister the same thing she had taught her when she had been old enough to stand on her own legs. Shortly before Ælfrith’s sixth birthday, they had started travelling through Italy and their mother had managed to find a way into the heart of her cherished child, initiating her at the art of premonition, taking her away from her sister's mundane world forever.

_ “I know what the Goddess chooses to show me, and she showed me he’s no good.” _

Hilda gave her a faint smile, filling the other bowls with hot soup.

“I’m happy to eat with him”, Milthryd finally said, breaking the tension with her naive way. “Everyone deserves some company…”

Hilda stroked her cheek.

She was the most kind-hearted person she had ever known: despite what mother thought about her, Milthryd was surely going to be a good, caring healer.

“Go, bird, take this soup to our guest before it gets too cold…”

Milthryd nodded.

Hilda gave Ælfrith a last look.

“Are you sure you don’t want to eat with us?”

Her sister didn’t even bother to reply.

  
  
  
  


“How can you speak my language?”

Hilda cocked her head. The stranger hadn't spoken a word the entire afternoon and hearing his voice - finally cleaned by the roughness of fever and sleep - delighted her somehow. It wasn’t a cavernous voice at all, in facts it sounded young and pleasurable to hear.

Milthryd gave him some kind of offended look: she had tried to talk to him all the dinner, dazing him with her mixture of english and german, but he had acted like a mute and she had started playing with her wooden doll instead.

She smiled softly.

“My father was a  _ Viking _ , like you.”

Viking was the name his father’s people had given themselves, according to what he used to tell her when he was alive, so she chose to avoid the derogatory term other people had invented to call them -  _ Northmen. _

Ivar’s eyes sparkled in the dim light of candles, impressed by her candour.

He gave her a quick look: she didn’t look like the women of Kattegat, muscular and tall. She didn’t look like Aslaug or Helga or Margarethe, with her flaming brown hair, bright hazel eyes and large hips. She wasn’t even that tall.

He frowned and she gave him a  _ what-are-you-staring-at  _ kind of look.

“You don’t look like one of our women”, he finally admitted. He didn’t know why, but shame had started to pool in his guts as soon as those words had left his mouth.

Her unperturbed look made him feel like a kid caught red handed stealing an apple from the market and he felt the urge to look anywhere else but her eyes.

She finally chuckled under her breath.

“Well, you don’t look like my father either, but I’d never dare to question your origins, son of Ragnar!”, she let out, almost laughing her ass off. “Ah, I don’t even know your name yet!”

Ivar straightened his back when she mentioned his father. His fame was so great that every single being walking on Midgard had at least heard about his name, cloaked in mystery and myth.

One day, he would have had the same fame. The fact that his father had chosen him among all of his brothers was the very proof of that.  _ Why would his father chose him, if it wasn’t his fate to be his true heir? _ The thought alone was enough to make his blood boil with joy.

“My name is Ivar, woman. Son of the man who---”

“...The man who made his people sail west, I know the story, thanks”, she abruptly interrupted, cutting his pompous monologue off even before it started. Ivar pouted at her insolence. No one in Kattegat would have never had the nerve of testing his patience that far...maybe only Sigurd, but Sigurd was a dick and therefore he didn’t count.  _ “And my name is not woman, Ivar. My name is Hilda” _ , she repeated.

Ivar’s lips twitched.

A part of him wanted so bad to slit her throat right there, but his most rational side couldn’t stop reminding him that he owed her his life and, more importantly, that harming a healer was an insult to the gods, as Floki had taught him a long ago.

He hissed, then, releasing some of his frustration in the herbal-scented air.

Hilda didn’t really know what was going on in that head of his, she wasn’t a seeress like her mother or Ælfrith. Seeing that Ivar wasn’t prone to small talk, though, she was ready to leave him alone, but then he tugged at her dress awkwardly and she froze in place.

His blue eyes looked just like the depths of the ocean, agitated by the invisible force of the underwater winds.

He looked so young and lonely, like he could lose himself if he was left to the whim of his own self.

“I think I still got the fever”, he simply stated. 

Hilda sat back on the stool beside the cot and a glimpse of relief gleamed in the back of his icy gaze.

  
  
  
  


“You aren’t gonna take my side, ain’t you? You think it was a mistake to save his life, like Ælfrith…” 

The goat bleated, giving Hilda a curious look through its glossy, yellow eyes. The healer scratched his light brown snout, dotted with white stains.

The house was silent, cradled by the distant sounds of the night. A dog was barking on the other side of the woods. Some mouses were making their sweet noises while nested in the hay.

Everyone was sleeping.

_ Almost everyone. _

She wasn’t able to stop thinking about Ivar. When he asked her to stay, claiming his fever had returned, they had a pleasant talk. As much as it was blatant that he wasn’t used to waste his breath with useless chattering, they had shared stories about the gods and the heroes - the same gods and heroes her father used to talk about before kissing her goodnight - and he told her about Kattegat, about his brothers...some mead had helped, though.

Hilda let out a long sigh.

“Don’t look at me like that”, she scolded when the goat gave her another inquiring look.

Ivar was different to any other man she had met in her endless traveling: he was cocky, yet somehow awkward. It was more than easy to make him uncomfortable - a word spoken in a slightly different tone could be enough to make him look away - and he wasn’t prone to talk about himself.

_ What was like to be a cripple in a world where crippled babies were usually left to die in the woods or drowned at birth in the ponds? _

“You spend too much time with Milthryd, sister. You’re starting to talk to the goats like her…”

Hilda jumped, scared, turning on her heels so quickly she felt dizzy for a while.

“Ælfrith! Don’t you ever sneak upon me like that anymore!”, she let out, breathless.

Ælfrith was casually brushing an old goat’s beard and she bowed her head, mortified.

“I’m sorry. I thought you’d heard me come in...I mean, the door isn’t silent.”

The healer shrugged slightly.

“I was just lost in thoughts…you’re supposed to be in bed, Elf, anyway.”

Her sister shook her head, walking to her gracefully. 

“I couldn’t sleep knowing that you’re angry at me.”

“I’m not angry, Elf. Really. You should go to bed and forget everything.”

Ælfrith grabbed her by the wrist, dragging her outside into the quiet night.

For the first time in ages, Hilda felt a connection with the sister she thought she had lost forever, ripped away from the mortal world by her visions and premonitions.

They sat on the wet grass, looking at the stars above their heads, then Ælfrith started speaking.

“Do you remember when you first taught me how to recognize a safe mushroom from a poisonous one?”

Hilda smiled softly, tilting her head back to allow the gentle breeze coming from the sea to brush her face.

How could she forget? They were travelling through the Apennines, following a secret path into secluded woods and abandoned villages. Her sister looked just like a spirit of the forest with her long hair loose and her dress soaked with mud and morning dew.

“I could never forget that”, she finally said, gently pinching Ælfrith’s thigh under the light dress. “We were close, back then…”

Her sister gave her a small grin.

“I want to do the same with Milthryd, if you allow me. You were such a good sister to me...I want to do the same for her. It’s not right she’s your responsibility only, Hild. Despite what mother says, she’s not useless. I want to take her with me in the woods and start teaching her some things.”

Hilda brushed a strand of thick, black hair from her forehead.

“You should wait for mother’s return. I could use some help with our guest and the chores…”

“I don’t know when she’ll be back, Hild. She’s even able to befuddle the Goddess with her unpredictable temper…”

The elder sister let out a small, husky laugh.

Their mother was gone to gather some supplies for the colder seasons but her trip to the nearby villages was also meant to make some villagers trust her as a healer. 

No one except her could have had such an idea.

“She’ll be back soon, sister, I’m sure. And I’m sure she has already found someone to heal...she likes to show off, we both know her.”

Elf agreed with a low grunt.

“Hild?”

“What, Elf?”

_ “Can you promise me that when your wind would call, you won’t follow it?” _

Hilda frowned, taken aback, unsure about what to say.

The dream she had about her father knocked at the edge of her memory, filling her nostrils with the scent of flowers and spring.

“I can’t promise you such a thing, sister”, she finally said. “I don’t even know where my wind is gonna lead me…”

Ælfrith took her hand and gave it a hard squeeze.

“Far away from me. Far away from Milthryd and mother”, she only said, her black eyes lost nowhere in the starry sky.

The healer took a deep breath, inhaling the mixture of smells that came from the forest.

_ Wet leaves. _

_ Salt. _

_ Moss. _

If the future was already written, sometimes she was grateful not to know what life had in store for her, after all.

  
  
  
  


Laying still in his arranged cot, Ivar listened at the healer’s muffled laugh coming from the small window right above his head.

What was it so special in her to make him feel like that?

A frustrated groan escaped his pursed lips.

_ Vulnerable. _

_ Lonely. _

It was the first time someone had been able to make him feel such a way, crumbling down his walls without even realizing it.

Her presence alone was enough.

_ Her smell alone, even, was enough. _

He had always thought that the company of the other people - and happiness in general - was completely overrated but that night he had felt the urge to  _ lie  _ just to spend time with a person.

_ A woman. _

He had wanted her by his side,  _ he had asked her to stay. _

He wasn’t one for asking. He wasn’t one for sissy sentimentalism, yet he had chosen to  _ beg _ her to stay with him.

Ivar shook his head vehemently.

Why were all those unnecessary thoughts showing up when he had more important things to take care of? He had to find out what had happened to his father, not question the gods about whether he was worthy of happiness or not: their answer was clear, by the way, and it was evident in his crippled, useless legs.

He could feel the familiar rushing of his own blood in his ears as his heartbeat got faster, following the frantic pace of his thoughts.

_ He needed to leave. _

It was the only thing he could do, if he really wanted to know his father’s fate and find a way to go back home.

_ Revenge couldn’t give a chance to such weaknesses as feelings, not even if the feeling he was experiencing for the first time was mere gratitude.  _


	3. The storm

III.

 

Hilda woke up to the insistent chirping of the birds, screaming outside her window fighting over a fat worm.

It was late morning. The bed her sisters shared was already empty and she stirred lazily, whispering a soft prayer to the Goddess to keep them safe in the woods.

Even if the whole realm was alert for Ragnar Lothbrok’s visit, no soldier had knocked at their door yet, nor she hadn’t seen anyone somewhere near their home. Still, Wessex wasn’t a place for women, so a part of her was nevertheless worried.

Although she hadn’t slept much, she felt well rested and splashing her face with cold water felt regenerating.

Singing an old german lullaby she walked to the earth to bake some bread - germans had taught her a little trick to bake it without actually using an oven - but when she saw Ivar curled up in a corner her cheerful singing abruptly ceased, the last words of her song choked in her throat.

“Ivar?”, she called, voice low.

He merely lifted his gaze.

“Ivar, what happened?”

Her tone was more concerned now, as she rushed to him and kneeled at his side. He tried to look away, avoiding her piercing gaze, his face stiff and stone still.

He was fully clothed, she finally realized, but that obvious point quickly sunk into oblivion, whipped away by a worry she wasn’t even able to fully understand.

“Ivar?”, she called more softly, daring to stroke his shoulder with the tip of her fingers.

He turned, then, and his eyes looked bloodshot and swollen.

_ He had cried. _

Hilda knitted her brows, but she was too wary to ask...and she was sure he would have been too proud to answer, though.

After what it seemed a whole eternity, Ivar outstretched his left hand, showing her a fresh burn digging deep into the calloused flesh of his palm, angry red and blistered.

The healer took it in her lap, studying the wound for a while.

“How?”

Ivar grunted, gritting his teeth when a jolt of pain ran up his arm.

“I stepped on a coal”, he hissed. “I was crawling too close to the earth.”

She tilted her head.

Suddenly, realization stung in her chest, bitter and cruel.

“You were going away”, she whispered, matter-of-factly.

_ He wanted to go away.  _ He was feeling better and he didn’t need her anymore. 

After all those years, Hilda was well used to the fact that people healed, they paid and then they went on with their lives as if she never existed, then why was Ivar so hard to let go? It was his right to go wherever he pleased, he wasn’t held captive.  _ Then why she was feeling the dreadful tickling of betrayal, knowing that he was about to leave? _

The house fell more silent than a grave as Hilda took care of the young viking’s injury. He hissed occasionally, trying to hold back more feral sounds, but none of them felt like talking.

The warm air around them was oppressive, electric.

Ivar couldn’t help but glance at her stern face, her lips pressed into a thin line, and feel slightly guilty.

When she was finished, they both stayed still, not daring to move until Hilda finally got sit on the floor, leaning her back against the wooden wall and stretching her legs.

When her knee brushed inadvertently against his, Ivar felt a jolt of excruciating pain radiating to his hipbone and he wasn’t quick enough to muffle a throaty cry.

Hilda gave him a surprised, mortified look, placing a caring hand over his leg without even asking what was wrong.

_ She simply knew. _

“I can help you...with the pain”, she said. “When I was living amongst the germans I used to take care of a boy who had the same disease…”

Ivar’s eyes widened in shock when she started stroking his legs with slow, skilled movements. How did she dare to pity him, the son of Ragnar Lothbrok? 

Anger, fear and a lot of sensations he couldn’t even name packed up in his brain, leading him close to his breaking point.

Groaning, he gripped her upper arm and dug his sharp nails into her tender flesh, feeling it crushing under his hand.

“Don’t”, he spat.

Hilda frowned, her hand shaking on his leg revealing that under her usual mask of composure, she was scared.

“You are hurting me, Ivar”, she stated, carefully pronouncing each word as if she was talking to a dumb kid, her face as unperturbed as ever.

The viking’s nails scratched and clawed.

“I don’t need your pity, woman!”

Unexpectedly, Hilda drew her face closer to his, her teeth exposed in a furious grimace.

When she was so close Ivar could actually feel her hot breath on his nose, his mouth felt agape and his grip on her arm loosened.

_ “There is a huge difference between pitying someone and taking care, son of Ragnar. I thought you were clever enough to understand something so simple.” _

Ivar didn’t know what to say. He just sat still while she grabbed his hand and unclasped it from her arm and started to massage the sore muscles of his legs.

Pain dissolved quickly under her ministrations and the young man felt the same relief he had felt when, as a child, Harbard had taken away all his pain.

His breath began to come out in shallow gasps.

_ She had said she didn’t pity him. _

When the healer’s skilled hands flew too close to his crotch Ivar froze, his heart skipping a beat.

“Relax”, she only said. She wasn’t even paying attention to his private parts, focused as she was on her work.

He felt the need to tell her he was sorry for hurting her but the words remained stubbornly stuck in his throat.

He closed his eyes, then, giving up on trying to make sense of what was happening to him. Everything felt so right he even fell asleep, relaxed and content, and he woke up to the sound of her voice whispering that she was finished.

He didn’t know how much time had passed.

“Thanks”, he whispered back.

Hilda got sharply on her feet, brushing some dirt from her grayish-blue dress.

“You’re free to leave, Son of Ragnar. If your fever broke, it means that you’re healed.”

  
  
  
  


Ivar tilted his head, confused, while she walked away in quick, long strides.

The pain in his legs was gone, replaced by the obnoxious tingling caused by having been sitting in the same position for too long.

A part of him was more than happy to finally be free from the tightness of those four walls - that only meant he could finally go and find his father, if his head was still attached to his neck - but the other wanted nothing more to stay there forever, far away from the world in that secluded home near the woods.

_ With Hilda. _

Ivar jerked at the thought, slapping his own cheek to regain control over his mind.

He hadn’t sailed to England for a wife, but to seek vengeance. Vengeance against king Ecbert, against all those filthy christians with their god made out of gold and lies, against the men who dared to defy the Vikings.

_ Then why did his body refuse to move? _

He rubbed his swollen eyes, an airy sigh blowing out of his nose.

Fresh air, that’s what he needed. Fresh air, or he would have gone mad for good.

  
  
  
  


Hilda only heard the door slamming open, then she was alone.

Completely and utterly alone.

She tried to convince herself that it was the right thing, that it was just how things were supposed to be, but the bad feeling of emptiness pooling in her stomach was suggesting her otherwise.

She was mad at him, too: how ungrateful for him to leave her  _ \- the one that had saved him, cured him despite all the odds, never leaving his side when the fever was so high she could cook an egg on his forehead -  _ without even saying goodbye.

She had just told him that he could leave, and he had left.

Without even whispering a ‘thank you’ under his breath.

Nothing.

The healer shook her head, picking up her broom and starting tidying carefully the bedroom floor. It was the only way she knew to keep her thoughts at bay. 

Cleaning, washing, dusting.

She busied the rest of her time with cataloguing her herbs on a piece of parchment she had treasured since they had left the german lands.

It had been an old moor to teach her how to write and read, when they were living in Sicily and she was just a girl. He used to live alone in a grand house made of stones and pearly white lime, with large porches opening on marvellous exotic gardens and armed guards at the door, and Hilda remembered his face as a net of thick wrinkles surrounding a pair of liquid, long-lashed dark eyes. He had decided to educate her as some sort of spiritual payback - alongside the more material one, golden and precious cloths - when her mother had cured his arthritis.

His name was Mansour, and he knew almost everything a man could be able to learn in a lifetime of study: history, astronomy, philosophy, medicine, music, arithmetics, religion, foreign languages...Hilda could have asked him anything, and he would have surely known the logical answer without making up stories for her.

He had schooled her for three years then, one night, two assassins had slit his throat while he was sleeping in his garden. The news of his gory death had spread fast through the sordid alleys, and soon Hilda had heard it, feeling uncertain about her future for the first time.

What would she have done from that moment on, after losing her mentor? He was about to teach her the principles of arithmetics, after having taught her latin and arabic, music and basics of astronomy.

Her mother had just told her to move on, allowing her to cry on her breasts until she had passed out. She was just a child, back then. And so she obediently followed her mother's suggestion and moved on.

Suddenly, Hilda’s thought got interrupted by the sound of the door cracking open and she jolted on the chair. 

_ Was Ivar back? _

When she sniffed the unmistakable smell of mushrooms and earth in the air, she relaxed.

Milthryd chirped something about how much she had learned in the forest, her eyes sparkling with pure joy. Ælfrith was trailing behind her, carrying a basket full of the finest delicacies the woods could offer.

She gave Hilda a furtive look, not even trying to make an effort to fit in the conversation the whole time.

_ That was when Hilda clearly had the feeling it was her sister’s fault if Ivar was gone.   _

  
  
  
  


“You did it, don’t you?”

It had started as a mere sensation, a chill that made the thin hair at the base of her neck curl when her sister had glanced at her discreetly, not knowing that she was being seen.

Then, suddenly, it had turned into a fact when Hilda had remembered that Ivar was dressed in the morning and she had realised there was no way he could have reached a shelf without anyone helping him... _ or handing him his pile of clothes, leaving it in plain sight and within his reach. _

Ælfrith turned to face her, still fiddling with the rope to take some fresh water out of the well.

She looked tired, like some kind of old woman trapped in the body of a prepubescent girl.

“I did what?”, she only said, not even bothering to hide the blatant annoyance in her voice.

Hilda rolled her eyes, feeling the warm pounding of a headache growing behind her temples.

“Come on, don’t play me for a fool, please. You know it. Ivar is gone. What surprises me most, sister, is that Milthryd asked no questions when you came home and found only me. She liked him, therefore I was prepared to hear a lot of complaining from her...somehow, it didn’t happen, and you know why? Because you had already informed her. _ Because it was you that provided an excuse for him to leave _ .”

Ælfrith shook her head, steadily putting her hands on her blooming hips like a grown woman.

_ Like their mother. _

“I knew he was leaving because I can see the future, sister, nothing more than that. And yes, I informed Mil that he was going away, just to spare you from her questions. I can’t get why you’re blaming me for something that was meant to happen, sooner or later…”

“Oh, please, stop! He was all dressed up when I met him this morning, Elf! Now tell me, sister, how could a cripple reach a high shelf on his own? Maybe the Goddess gifted him with a pair of wings during the night?”, she mocked angrily.

Ælfrith’s dark eyes widened as she realized she had been caught, and her jaw tightened in a grimace. Then, she let out a grunt, letting the bucket fall on the ground in a dramatic splash of cold water that soaked the skirts of their dresses.

“Yes, I gave him his clothes back because I wanted him to leave! What else was I supposed to do, since you don’t listen to me? He. Is. Dangerous. I couldn’t allow you to grow that fond of him!”

The words streamed out of her mouth like a loud waterfall rumbling in the woods.

Hilda wanted to be eaten alive by the ground, for the shame of being scolded by her eleven years old sister was too much to take for her pride.

She was undoubtedly growing fond of Ivar, but how could her sister think she was in the position to control her, changing the course of her fate? Who had ever chosen her to be her guardian, judge and jury? 

The sole thought made Hilda get beyond furious.

Before meeting Ivar she had never felt like that for someone, let alone some fellow she had taken care of. He seemed to be the exception, the rarest jewel in the collection of a king.

Ælfrith reacted to her silence by giving her the worst of her ‘I-know-things-that-you-don’t-know’ looks.

“You shouldn’t have done that. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thanks”, Hilda was only able to stutter back, feeling damn small under her piercing, timeless gaze.

“You clearly don’t, because if you were you wouldn’t have let him slip under your skin so easily!”

That was the last straw.

Everything froze for a moment, even the familiar rustling of the leaves ceased, the breeze suddenly cut off by something much more powerful than nature itself.

_ Wrath. _

Hilda’s hand moved on its own volition, cutting sharply through the still air and smacking against her sister’s cheek.

Rage and shock ran through her veins. She had never laid a hand on anyone, especially on one of her sisters, but she was so mad at Ælfrith she couldn’t stop herself. Her sister had crossed the line too many times since their mother had filled her head with the idea of being the most powerful seeress of their times.

The younger girl stepped back, surprised by her violent reaction.

Their surroundings came to life once again, carrying along gray, stormy clouds swelling with rain and wind.

“Mother’s coming home”, Ælfrith stated, before rushing inside their house with her half empty bucket in her hand.

Hilda stood still, too stunned to move. Her hand,  _ the one she used to hit her younger sister,  _ hurt.

A single raindrop fell on her nose, but she didn’t even bother to care.

  
  
  
  


The forest was humid, infested by every sort of rodent and tricky roots sticking out of the mossy ground, making almost impossible for Ivar to crawl without cursing and striving.

When he felt too sore to go on, he found a bulging root that was large enough for him to sit and he took a long, relieved breath. A storm was approaching from east, its wet whiff could already be smelled in the cooling air.

The young viking took some time to examine his options and he guessed, grunting, he hadn’t many.

Going on, or going back to the healer’s house with his tail between his legs.

His pride protested vehemently and he couldn’t help but sneer at himself.

If he was going to find his father, then what would have happened? He was completely unarmed, since his axe and sword were gone during the shipwreck, and fighting wasn’t a viable option since hand-to-hand wasn’t his speciality.

What would he have done, once - assuming he was able to find a way there! - at the gates of king Ecbert’s villa? He surely had guards and an army to protect his home.

_ What could he have done to an entire army, crippled, alone and unarmed? They would have surely laughed at him, maybe killed him with an arrow without thinking about it twice. _

Ivar knitted his brows.

_ Since when his thoughts had started to speak with the unmistakable voice of the healer? _

As much as he was trying not to think about her, his brain seemed to defect him, constantly reminding him he had left without even saying goodbye.

Ivar glanced at his crooked legs, still feeling the ghost of her fingertips tingling against his skin: her touch alone had been able to wash away the unbearable pain, some thing the best healers in Kattegat had never been able to do. As far as he knew it, filthy christians would have called it a miracle. 

Besides, she had been pretty clear about the fact she didn’t pity him for his condition. She never told him he was cursed, like many of his people used to say, nor that he was a freak or a monster, or that he wouldn’t be better dead at birth...that was enough to make his heart skip a beat the thought of her.

Without even realizing it, he had already started to crawl back towards her home, feeling an odd warmth in his chest he wasn’t sure he would have ever experienced his whole life.

_ He was growing fond of her. _

His old self, the boy he had left on the docks back home when he had sailed for England, would have never felt that way.

  
  
  
  


The rest of the day passed in a deceitfully civil silence. Not even Milthryd, who wasn’t surely known for being discreet, dared to interrupt the tensed truced established between her sisters, the unspoken agreement of never mentioning the afternoon events again.

Rain was patting dully on the roof, pushed against the wooden walls by the insistent wind. Hilda wondered if their mother was already on her way home and if she had possibly found a place where to stop during the storm. Ælfrith had said that she was coming home, not where she actually was.

When the long, tedious hours slipped into the evening, Ælfrith said that she wanted to be in charge for dinner, and Hilda made no objections, wrapping herself in a colorful scarf - one of the many gift Mansour had given her as a praise for being a diligent student, back in Sicily - and went to check out the goats.

The barn was her favourite place to be when she needed some time alone, a break from her mother’s antics and her sisters’ bickering. She inhaled deeply the sour, crispy scent of wet hay and two goats greeted her with their monotone bleating. Smiling, she scratched their gaunt heads and feed them some vegetable scraps then, when she was proceeding to check the two baby goats that were born a couple of months before, the crackling of moving hay made her jump, alert.

“Woman.”

Hilda gasped, feeling her knees weak.

It was Ivar’s voice, coming from a pile of straw.

Although she wanted to keep her dignified look, she couldn’t help but crack her lips open in a half smile, pleasantly surprised that he was back.

“I thought you had left…”, she breathed out, nervously fidgeting with the golden edge of her scarf.

Ivar, nested in the hay like some kind of strange bird, shrugged casually.

“I changed my mind. I thought that  _ maybe _ , maybe I couldn’t defeat an army with my bare hands, so…”

The healer let out an amused blow of air from her nose, leaving the goats alone to sit in the hay with him, careful not to bump into his legs while getting comfortable.

“So young and so wise!”, she teased, trying her best to hide how much she was happy he was back.

He let out a low grunt, but it was quite obvious that he was happy too.

“Stop mocking, woman. Maybe it’s your constant fussing that made me that soft…”

Hilda clicked her tongue.

“If you don’t like my attentions, then why are you here?”

It was a rhetorical question, yet Ivar felt cut to the quick and retreated visibly, words dying in his throat.

For a moment, Hilda thought she had said something wrong  _ \- or something right, but in the wrong way and at the wrong time  _ \- and opened her mouth to say that she was sorry, but when Ivar’s lips crashed unexpectedly onto hers, her apology was swallowed whole in his sloppy mouth, while the world started to spin faster around her.

He seemed utterly unexperienced at kissing, nibbling and pecking greedily at her lips and when Hilda tried to deepen the kiss he looked as surprised as a boy.

Had he ever kissed a woman, before? Hilda was aware that, despite he was Ragnar Lothbrok’s son, women didn’t exactly wait in line to be bedded by a cripple.

Luckily, Ivar was still pliant enough to let her take control over his mouth, swirling her tongue as she pleased.

It was true that he had a few experiences before: only the kisses stolen to the blacksmith’s daughter when he wasn’t older than ten, then Margarethe.

The shameful memories of his one and only attempt to have sex knocked at the doors of his conscience when Hilda roughly climbed on his lap, spreading her legs on his groin with a low, muffled moan.

“No!”, he groaned harshly, breaking the kiss and pushing her slightly, making her flinch.

Hilda’s eyes shined with excitement and questions, as she was starting to figure out the reason behind the sudden change in his moods.

Ivar blushed, gently scratching the back of her hand with his nail.

“No”, he said again, cupping her jaw and placing a chaste, embarrassed kiss at the corner of her mouth.

“Why not?”, she just asked, cocking her head.

He wasn’t able to come up with a convincing excuse, so he decided to ignore her question and started kissing her again instead.

  
  
  
  


When Ælfrith saw her sister stepping back in with the viking by her side, her jaw dropped to her knees.

Hilda gave her a small, gloating smile.

That was something she wasn’t able to foresee, to  _ prevent. _

Milthryd, on the other hand, looked absolutely happy that he was back and, while Ælfrith spent most of the dinner glaring at Ivar with a scowly look on her face, she acted even more chatty than the usual, even if he couldn’t understand a single word.

The young man looked mostly lost in his thoughts, his icy blue eyes staring at nothing and his mouth chewing the stringy meat of the roasted rabbit automatically, one careful bite after the other.

Hilda didn’t know how she was supposed to feel - ashamed because he was someone she had took care of? Scared, because he was going to bring an army and have his revenge against king Ecbert? Happy, because someone she fancied had kissed her? - and almost choked on a piece of meat when the sudden thought of her mother coming home hit her mind.

Ivar patted her between the shoulder blades, a concerned look on her face.

That affectionate gesture didn’t go unnoticed and Ælfrith showed her disapproval by giving Milthryd what was left of her dinner and retiring for the night.

When she was finally alone, she prayed the Goddess to change her mind about her elder sister’s fate.  _ She knew her wish hadn’t been granted when she heard the soft, warm laughter of her sister followed by the viking’s huskier one. _

She could even picture them, their faces so close they could actually touch, their eyes locked by the same mysterious force that had pushed her mother into the arms of a northman many years before.

_ That was her sister’s wind to follow, then?  _

The dangerous wind blowing from the north, ready to take her away forever, to a life of battles and blood and death.


	4. Mother dearest, part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!  
> Two words: first, I'm flattered of all the kudos and comments you left at the previous chapters - hell, I'm even flattered about how many views this work has! - and I want to thank you, everyone of you, from the bottom of my heart; second, A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOAP IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, BECAUSE THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SOAP. LIKE, A LOT OF SOAP. Well, where to begin with? After the catastrophic fall of Western Roman Empire and the consequent germanisation of society and costumes, a lot of exotic goods that romans imported from the east stopped travelling through the most peripheral regions of the former Roman Empire so, by the time our story is set - IX century A.D - most parts of Europe - if you exclude that small region that was still in a close relationship with Byzantium - only know animal fat based soaps, good for scrubbing dirt off clothes but definitely not suitable to clean human skin or hair. Then why Hilda owns and treasures some bars of soap? Well, that's because she has spent part of her life among the Moors, the only ones who were still able to craft soap, that's it.  
> Now you can finally read in peace.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

IV.

 

Ivar tossed and turned in his cot all night, unable to sleep.

The thought of Hilda seated on his lap with her legs parted and her head tilted backwards was burning a hole in his brain.

_ How could he cope with the fact that he would have never seen that same scene again, now that he was forced to deny her attempt to have sex with him? _ He was just half of a man, he thought, with useless legs and a more useless cock.

Just a mere ornament of flesh and blood, that was his prick. He would have gladly ripped it away with his bare teeth, if he could.

Anger and sadness made him breath out a frustrated groan.

Who was Ivar the Boneless, in the end? Just another worthless crippled who couldn’t have sex with a woman and save his own father from a certain death? Was he really only that, and nothing more? Some days, he was more than sure that the gods would have soon smiled upon him, making him a great warrior like his father in his good old days, making him a famous and feared viking whose disability would have been ignored in favour of his qualities. Some other days, he tended to be more realistic. That was one of the more realistic days indeed.

A tear run down his face, his feelings unable to burst out in any other way that wasn’t too destructive or too violent for the late hour and the place. 

If he was condemned to live the rest of his life carrying that feeling of helplessness along, he gloomily thought, then he would have been better dead at the bottom of the sea.

  
  
  
  


Hilda too found it hard to fall asleep.

Milthryd, who had insisted on sleeping with her, curled at her side, a small stream of drool running down her chin. She wrapped her arms around her small figure, wondering why Ivar had so vehemently refused to have sex with her.

Was he scared about her judgment, giving that he was so inexperienced? Did he think she would have mocked him for not being able to bed a girl properly?

She let out a small sigh, as her heart sunk to the thought of how much he had surely suffered because of his condition.

She didn’t pity him, of course - her experience as a healer had taught her never to pity the ill ones or the cripples, for different but equally valid reasons - yet she couldn’t help but feel bad for him in a sort of affectionate way.

She wanted to show him that nice people existed, despite how much the world was a tough place to live into, and that despite his deformed legs he was worthy of happiness...and of all the joys sex could bring, of course.

After all, as Milthryd had wisely said not a long time before, everyone deserved company. Ivar, even though he was difficult to keep up with because of his attitude, was no exception.

  
  
  
  


When Ivar woke up in the morning, Hilda was humming a tune under her breath, unbraiding her long hair in front of the window and letting it fall free on her back, wild and unkempt, their brownish shade shining copper and gold in the dim sunlight.

“Where are you going?”, he asked, noticing the basket at her feet.

She smiled at him fondly, a small, bright smile that made Ivar’s heart skip a beat.

Rain had stopped falling just a few hours before, and the air still felt crispy despite the warm, pale sun.

“I really need to take a bath. The first rule of the good healer is to always be clean and”, she chuckled, taking a big strand of hair between her fingers and examining it carefully, “I’m clearly anything but clean, right now. Are you coming with me? You could use a bath yourself…”

He knitted his brows, unsure about what to do. If she was going to take a bath, then she was going to get naked. Things could have been pretty awkward.

He was tempted to refuse, but when she started swaying her hips towards the door, he couldn’t help but follow her like some kind of mangled hound, cursing at himself under his breath.

_ Since when he had allowed someone to hold such power over him?  _ He had always took a little interest in women and it had only been caused by his older brothers’ stories about how amazing sex was and how soft and welcoming women were.

While crawling through the thick, wet grass, Ivar wondered how  _ welcoming  _ must have been Hilda while she was eagerly sitting on his lap, wantonly rocking her hips against his groin.

Carried away by his thoughts, he headbutted her in the leg and she let out a soft laugh, bending to place a kiss on his forehead.

A silly smiled popped on his face and, for the first time in his life, Ivar felt lighter than a feather carried by the wind.

“Here we are”, she smiled, “That’s my favourite spot to bathe.”

While she undressed, the young man wasn’t able to lift his gaze from her. Not even once. Not even when she dipped her toes in the cold waters and yelped amusingly, stating that bathing after a storm was a pure act of bravery and diving into the stream with a loud, warrior-like roar. 

  
  
  


Hilda shivered while getting rid of her green dress.

The storm had made the stream swell with clear, ice-cold waters, and she was already freezing. She was well aware of Ivar’s gaze on her naked body, and she wondered if maybe he would have tried some physical contact with her now that she was at his mercy.

When she realised he would have never tried to have sex with her -  _ at least it didn’t looked like he was going to _ \- she shrugged to herself and, grabbing a bar of soap from her basket, she made her way to the chilly stream.

“Bathing after a storm is a pure act of bravery”, she stated, grinning, before letting out a cry and sinking shoulder-deep in the water.

Ivar was sitting on the large fallen branch of an oak, his unfathomable face glowing in the pale yellow sunrays.

“Your sister doesn’t like me”, he breathed out, ripping some flaccid bark from the dead branch and fidgeting with it.

Hilda lathered her skin meticulously, enjoying the feeling of grime and dirt being washed away, thinking about something that could help her avoid that conversation. She didn’t feel like talking about Ælfrith or the reasons behind her definitely not friendly attitude towards him, still feeling the painful sting of guilt for having smacked her just the day before.

“It’s because you stink”, she improvised. “You stink like a rotting goat, that’s it. When was the last time you had a proper bath?”

The young viking chuckled, throwing some bark at her. No one in Kattegat could have ever said something like that and get away with it, but she was allowed to say a lot of things other people couldn’t and Ivar was more than okay with that, somehow.

“Uhm...let me think this out…”, he said, faking an overfocused look. Hilda giggled at how funny his face was, all pouty and frowned. “Ah, yes! It was when my ship was tore to pieces by the most massive wave Thor could summon and I almost died!”, it was his sarcastic reply.

She gave him a slightly disapproving look.

“That doesn’t count as a proper bath, do you understand that?”

“All right then, if it doesn’t count, then I don’t know when my last  _ proper bath _ was”, he said, mocking her tone.

The healer rolled her eyes.

“Come on, you stink so much I could find you even in the largest crowd you can picture. Get in the water, I’m going to wash you.”

Ivar’s cheeks turned bright red, but Hilda couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or from the sunlight.

“I don’t stink woman! And, moreover, I won’t put my own life at risk for your sensitive nose!”, he yelled.

She let out a silly giggle.

So he was truly terrified of water, after all. He couldn’t float because of his legs, so he didn’t really like bathing, Hilda thought. In facts, Ivar - like most of his people - found bathing an useless quirk, as the vikings preferred to wash only their faces, armpits and genitals into a large basin...only when water wasn’t completely frozen by the harsh colds of winter, of course.

“I promise I won’t let you sink”, she said, walking towards him slowly, her round, full breasts jiggling with every step.

Ivar drew in a sharp breath at the sight of her rosy nipples wrinkling and stiffening in the cool air.

His brothers had always talked a lot about breasts, and he had to admit to himself that the healer’s were damn good to look at, soft, big and white. Margrethe’s breasts didn’t effect him much, for they were too flat and firm for his taste.

“I don’t want to…”, he slurred, mesmerized with the vision of her shiny, slick skin.

When she was just a couple of steps far from his reach, she bent as if she was talking to a small kid, connecting her eyes with his.

“Please? There’s a rock where you can sit while I wash you. You won’t drown, I swear.”

Ivar felt his mouth go dry when she started to undress him without waiting for an answer. When she was undoing his worn trousers, he placed a hand over hers, stopping her.

“Just wait for me in the water, let me finish on my own”, he stuttered, still shaken.

Hilda sighed as a form of weak, yet heartfelt, protest.

“All right, as you wish. Just...promise me you’ll let me wash you clean. I wasn’t kidding when I said that your smell is becoming quite unbearable…”

Ivar nodded and, when he was sure she had turned away, he took his pants off.

He was still sensitive about how he looked from the waist down although Hilda had always seemed unimpressed by the inglorious sight of his crooked, undermuscled legs, and he dragged his body to the water with a shameful look on his face.

When a little wave hit his wrists, he was tempted to back away, but his pride got the upper hand and he was forced to gulp down the lump that had formed into his throat while crawling towards the big, smooth rock towering above the surface of the water.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to dismiss the unpleasant memory of the shipwreck, the sensation of drowning still lingering into his lungs like a constant reminder that he could have died any moment, swallowed by forces way bigger than himself.

“What a brave man you are”, Hilda said when he finally climbed on the rock, sitting still while she started rubbing some kind of  _ solid oil _ on his skin. It smelled like some kind of flower or fruit, he wasn’t sure, and he gave the healer a confused look.

“What is this thing? It’s greasy...and it smells girly”, he winced, slightly outraged.

Hilda let out a husky laugh, rubbing the thing under his armpits thoroughly, as if she was trying to rip away his skin. 

“It’s called soap, Ivar. Moors use it regularly to wash, they are really clean people. A lot of artisans became rich crafting and selling soap in the Mediterranean and in Frankia...it’s a shame I’m not able to craft soap on my own. I can say this is one of my most cherished treasures…”

“Then you’re wasting it, using it on me.”

She scoffed, scrubbing him as if she was scrubbing an old, crusty cauldron. 

It reminded him of his childhood, when his mother used to bathe him just like that, gently but firmly enough to get him clean: it wasn’t a daily ritual, of course, but it had happened sometimes. A surge of nostalgia hit his mind: what was his mother doing back home? Did she feel alone without him? He betted she felt utterly alone, left there with just the rather depressing company of Ubbe and Sigurd.

He snapped back to reality when Hilda started washing his feet, cleaning each toe one by one.

“You don’t have to…”, he whispered, ashamed by the monstrous look of his lower limbs.

She grinned, placing a small kiss on his bony ankle, embarrassing him further.

“I’ve already told you that your legs aren’t as repulsive as you think. Believe me when I say that I‘ve seen worse, because it’s true.”

The viking ducked his head, not actually sure she was telling the truth.

“What could possibly be worse than this?”

“A lot of things, Ivar”, she grunted. “Have you ever seen legs so deformed they looked like the root of a plant? No? Or human legs that look like pig legs? Well, I did. You should be grateful you were born with legs that actually look like legs, instead of stumps…”

He chuckled bitterly.

“As if it was enough to have legs...it’s easy to talk for someone who can stand and walk, isn’t it?”

She raised a brow.

“Walking is overrated”, she stated. “You have other qualities, but you won’t ever be able to see them with this attitude…”

They both started laughing out of the blue.

He even sprayed her with water, earning a surprised cry.

Was it happiness, then? Joy? He didn’t know, but he was sure, while looking into Hilda’s clear eyes, that he was really close to find it out.  

  
  
  
  


“And this? What is this?”

Hilda gently shook the bottle in her hands, then poured some thick liquid on her fingers and applied it on her hair.

“It cleans your hair and yes, before you ask, this one smells girly too.”

“Are you going to make me smell like a whore?”

Hilda’s lips curled into an amused smile.

“Oh, shut up!”, she said, elbowing him in the chest playfully. She couldn’t remember when was the last time she had a pleasant conversation, after Mansour’s death: Italy had been just a collection of grim faces of pilgrims headed to Rome, a land where most of the people thought her odd family was a coven of witches or a traveling brothel, while in Germany people were too busy with their everyday lives to really care about a girl who wanted someone to talk to.

“Are you sure that this thing isn’t going to poison me?”

The healer let out an exaggerated huff.

“If this thing was poisonous, then half of the mediterranean lands would be inhabited by corpses.”

Ivar didn’t reply. She massaged some oil on his dirty scalp, eliciting a soft, content moan from his plush lips.

“Now tell me that you don’t like it”, she teased, feeling bold enough to place a kiss behind his ear, causing a shiver to run down his spine.

He hummed something, not really able to articulate a true sentence, and leaned into her touch like a docile cat.

Hilda thought that she had find his soft spots: scalp, hair and ears.

When her fingers elicited another purred moan, she felt the tingling heat of desire pool in her lower belly, arousal making her head spin.

_ “Why don’t you want to have sex with me?” _ , she finally asked, barely registering she was saying it until it was too late to stop.

She felt Ivar gasping, his chiseled muscles contracting visibly in his back while he abruptly came back from his dream-like state to the harsh reality.

A long silence followed her unfortunate question, as Ivar considered whether to spill the beans about his impotence or just make up a rather believable excuse and Hilda cursed herself for having killed the moment with his arousal-induced impulsivity.

_ “I won’t be able to please you, that’s why I don’t want to have sex with you” _ , he stated, his face as hard and cold as stone. Hilda, as much as the news shocked her, appreciated his sincerity and thanked him with a long, caring kiss on the back of his neck. He squeezed her thigh gently in return, grateful she hadn’t said she felt sorry for him. It would have been too much to take.

“How did you find out?”

Ivar shrugged, letting her chin rest above his head.

“I had to lay with a woman, of course. My brothers shared a slave...they all had her, I mean, I had the right to have her too. It was humiliating...she feared me, I knew it, and that pleased me someway...but she pitied me too, she despised me, and when it was clear that my cock wasn’t going to work I almost killed her out of fear, because I didn’t want the rumor to spread. That’s why I won’t have sex with you, Hilda. I don’t want you to think that I’m less of a man if I can’t stick my cock into you…”

It felt liberating to Ivar to finally be able to talk about such intimate things with someone: usually, a man would have kept his feelings to himself, or so it was the way in Kattegat. Hilda listened carefully, pondering his every word with her brows knitted.

She was a healer and many, many times - many more that she could count, actually - she had to deal with men showing up at her door and complaining they weren’t able to fuck anymore, but they were old men...Ivar wasn’t.  _ Was he really unable to have sex at all? _ The doubt gnawed at her guts until she was forced to spit it out.

“Are you sure about that?”

The young viking finally turned to face her, his face frowned.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged.

“I mean that even the manliest of men wouldn’t have been able to have sex with someone who keeps a certain attitude towards him...have you ever considered that your cock may function and that could have been just an unlucky day?”

His face flushed all in once when he finally understood. Was she too hopeful or it was him who had been too dumb and an easy quitter? He decided to go for the first answer, not wanting to hold onto hope too much. holding onto hope, he had learnt, could only lead to misery.

“No, I would perfectly know if it was an unlucky day, thanks”, he cut short, pissed.

Hilda snarled - how spoiled could he possibly be? - but she wasn’t gonna let it go.

“I can try some of my remedies, you know...they are temporary, of course, but if you want…”

Ivar cocked his head, thougtful.

“I’ll think about it”, he mumbled. “Can you now go back to what were you doing? I really like having your fingers in my hair…”

Hilda huffed at his drastic change of subject, however she didn’t protest.

When she casually started to massage his scalp again, Ivar felt some knot in his stomach he had never experienced before, some pleasant warmth he couldn’t recognize but that felt so primal he could actually recall its ancestral memory in his bones.

When he opened his eyes, he found his cock slightly stiff, swollen, but it lasted so short he thought it was just a cruel illusion of the gods, fed by Hilda’s hopes and desires.

  
  
  
  


“How is your hand doing?”

They were drying up on the shore, their wet bodies wrapped into clean towels that smelled of soap.

Ivar gave her a puzzled look at first, then he glanced at his hand and remembered he had gotten burnt not a long time before.

Hilda had taken such a good care of his injury that he had literally forgotten he had stepped on a hot coal.

“It doesn’t hurt. You’re a good healer…”

She smiled faintly, taking his hand in hers and checking the already scabbed scorch, then bandaged it again.

She was aware of her own talent, but being praised by Ivar make her gloat with the outmost pride.

“Thank you...it’s all experience, I guess. My mother had started training me as soon as I proved myself able enough at toddling around her skirt”, she giggled, combing her still oozing hair with an old comb that had lost most of its teeth.

Ivar took his time to watch her naked body closely, before she put on her dress, paying special attentions to her curves. He noticed, then, that she had a long scar on her hipbone, and he outstretched his fingers to caress it before it could disappear under the dress.

“How did you get this?”

Hilda leaned into the touch, letting out a hum of content. When he retracted to allow her to get dressed, she unintentionally pouted like a child, frowning at the loss of contact between their skins.

“I was still living with the Moors in Sicily...I was playing with a kid and things ended up out of hand, although I can’t remember why...we were playing near a furnace and he hit me with an iron bar that had just been heated to be shaped, you know...so that’s the result.”

Ivar’s face twisted into a furious expression.

“You should have killed him. He hurt you. He deserved to die.”

Hilda shook her head, slightly rebuking him.

_ Was it his weird way to show affection?  _ She decided not to care for the moment, yet a shiver ran down her spine.  _ Was he really as dangerous as Ælfrith had pictured him? _

“I don’t think a kid deserves to be killed just because he hurt me while playing, Ivar…”

He sighed heavily, picking up a small rock and throwing it in the water.

He had killed a kid for less, when he was a kid himself. He was born and raised believing that everyone who dared to disrespect him deserved to die and deep down he was sure he hadn’t done anything bad while sticking an axe into the kid’s head...or, at least, his mother had convinced him of that.  _ “It’s his fault, for he outraged you” _ , she had said, and Ivar had believed her... _ he always believed whatever his mother told him. _

“Vengeance is your right. Blood calls for blood, that’s the natural state of things…”, he muttered carelessly. “Nevermind, though. People in Kattegat tend to respect you more if you have scars to show: it means that you have fought...and that you have won.”

Hilda’s lips curled into a smile.

“Father used to say that whenever I got hurt. He had a lot of scars...he used to say that they were the proof he had rejected many times the invitation of the Gods to join them in Valhalla.”

Ivar pulled her close, placing a kiss on the rough fabric of her dress, just above her waist.

Feeling the heat of her body and the unmistakeable scent of her skin made his balls ache and his cock twitch painfully into his trousers. Yet again, he ignored the feeling, telling himself it was just a trick of his own mind.

“If the Gods should invite me to join them soon, I would never refuse their call”, he stated, earning a sad look from the healer.

  
  
  
  


The walk back home was slow and peaceful.

He insisted to learn some useful english words and Hilda agreed to teach him, laughing at his weird accent until he started to throw moss at her, which lead to a gigglish, childish fight in the grass.

By the time they reached the small house in the woods, they were both close to need another bath.

Hilda absentmindedly opened the door and let out a surprised gasp when she got face to face with her mother, the grin on her lips turning into an ‘o’.

The older woman smiled, giving her a cunning look.

“Hilda, my little dove!  Ælfrith was just telling me you’ve taken home a guest, while I was away…”

Hilda huffed but her mother chuckled, hugging her tightly and burying her face in her still damp hair.

Ivar, who was watching them from the floor, couldn’t help but notice how different the two women were. Hilda’s mother, despite her small stature, was able to tower over her daughters, as graceful and ethereal as a queen...or Freyja herself. Her hair were bright orange, wavy, surrounding a sharp angled face.

He stared at her for a while, thinking about how much she resembled his mother, until he heard her voice calling at him.

It sounded high and imperious, just as he had guessed it would have sounded like.

“My daughter said you’re a viking”, she said, kneeling in order to stare directly into his eyes.

Ivar felt scrutinized by that pair of green, bewitching irises that pierced through his brain, as sly as a wildcat’s.

His heart started pounding in his chest.

Her eyes looked somehow ancient, distant and cold like the stars in a summer sky.

Hilda tried to give him an apologizing look, but he barely registered that.

In the meantime, Hilda was wondering what would have happened now that she wasn’t in charge anymore: since her mother was back home, she had to fit again in the small space she had created for her when she was only a child, a shadow behind her colorful skirts.

“I am a viking, yes”, Ivar proudly stated, finally.

Hilda’s mother grinned, taking his chin between her fingers and examining his features as if she was looking for a flaw or a birthmark of some sorts. When she finally released him with a satisfied smile, the young man realized he had held his breath all the time.

“Do you have a name?”, she asked, a cocky smirk on her face, her norse rusty but still understandable enough.  

Ivar’s mouth got dry for a moment staring into those intimidating eyes.

“Ivar”, he stuttered. “My name is Ivar.”

She nodded, as if she already knew it.

“My name is Maeve”, the woman said, getting on her feet. 

Hilda squeezed her arm.

“He’s the son of Ragnar Lothbrok…”, she said, and her mother chuckled playfully.

“I know, dove”, she cooed, earning a puzzled look from her guest.

_ How could she know? _

He was about to ask, but Hilda stopped him with a glare.

“I’m going to have a bath”, Maeve finally declared. “These saxons aren’t even able to craft a decent soap…”

Ælfrith silently followed her steps, and when she passed by Ivar she muttered something under her breath, giving him an angry look.

  
  
  
  


Hilda wasn’t sure for how long she had been sitting on the wet grass, staring at the gentle swaying of the branches in the breeze.

_ What would have happened to Ivar, now that her mother was back?  _ She had tried to avoid asking that question to herself for as much as she could, but now that she had crossed that bridge it was inevitable to think about the future. She was afraid the answer at her question was that he had to leave... _ for good. _

The thought made a lump grow in her throat. How could she bear seeing him leaving for real, forever?

_ Or at least until he had gathered up an army large enough to unleash against Wessex and crush it under its force. _

“You don’t look glad that your mother is home…”

Hilda blinked, startled. Ivar was staring at her from the bottom up, splayed on the grass with his hands under his chin.

“How long have you been there?”

He shrugged, propping himself on his elbows and dragging his legs around to sit next to her.

“Not much, actually. Your sister’s endless babbling made my ears bleed. Does she ever stop talking?”

A wide, fond smile bloomed on the healer’s pale lips. Milthryd was definitely too pure for such a cruel, cold world.

“You should get worried if she does. It can only mean that something bad - really bad, I mean - had happened.”

_ She only stops talking when I and Ælfrith have an argument _ , she thought, wincing as the bad memories of their last fight resurfaced.

The viking rolled his eyes.

“My brother Sigurd never shuts up and, guess what? I’d gladly smash his head with a stick, if it could help silencing him for once.”

Hilda huffed, curling a blade of grass around her finger. As much as she didn’t like that, a part of her knew for sure he was perfectly capable of doing such a thing. Something at the bottom of his blue eyes told her a story of barely contained anger and violent outbursts.

“Speaking of my mother, I’m glad she’s home. Traveling isn’t safe, especially for a woman that travels alone, but...it’s hard to deal with her. She’s not like the others…”

He frowned, tilting his head like a lost goat caught in the middle of a storm.

“Does it have to do with the fact that she already knew I’m Ragnar’s son? How could she, if you were the only one who knew it in the whole house?”

Hilda sighed.

There came the hardest part, telling a stranger what her mother and Ælfrith were capable of. Not that they had the habit of sharing it with anyone, especially when a lot of people thought that having such powers meant to be close to forces they feared, like the devil, and would have gladly harmed them for that...but Ivar was no christian, and perhaps the sole thought of the Devil didn’t make sense to him, assuming he even knew who the Devil was. At least, Hilda’s father had never been able to comprehend some of the atavic fears that gnawed at the guts of christians, although he had lived among them for quite some time.

“It’s a long story, but she was born with the gift of foreseeing. Ælfrith too owns it, it runs in the family…”

Ivar’s eyes widened in awe.

“Does it...does it mean that you’re a seeress too?”

She shook her head.

“No. What a disappointment for a mother to have a firstborn with no qualities…”, she muttered to herself. It still stung to admit she didn’t have had such a gift at birth. “As far as I know, she knew you were coming even before you sailed west with your father…”

Ivar looked thoughtful and Hilda could almost feel his thoughts moving fast through his mind.

_ A firstborn with no qualities _ , that was how she had called herself.

It wasn’t entirely true, though: she was a skilled healer, better than her mother, but that seemed not to be enough. Maeve had pushed her, since she was a kid, to get at the bottom of her odd, prophetic dreams, and she had took a stand by deciding to ignore her supposed ability, seeking refuge into curing the ills and fixing up wounds.

“I want to ask your mother some questions”, Ivar finally spoke, brushing the tip of his finger on the back of her hand.

“I wouldn’t, if I was you. Sometimes, it’s better not to know what tomorrow brings…”

Ivar sighed heavily.

He wasn’t one to listen at someone’s advice, for how much it was a wise suggestion indeed...


	5. Mother dearest, part II

V.

 

“Wait...did you really steal a carriage? With two horses?!”

The whole family was reunited beside the hearth for dinner. Ivar lifted his face from his steamy bowl at Hilda’s high-pitched, surprised tone, although whatever she was speaking sounded like pure gibberish to his ears.

Her mother smiled, as cocky as a young brat winning at his first fist-fight.

“Aye. Did you think that our old donkey could carry home me and all those supplies all alone?”

Milthryd chuckled at her words, her chin stained with thick, fat broth, and earned a scolding look from her eldest sister.

“What if someone saw you? Did you consider that you have a family to preserve, while acting such recklessly?”

Maeve rolled her eyes grinning, wincing at Milthryd in some kind of unexpected complicity the kid welcomed with a heartfelt smile. She had a lot of things to be proud of, lately: first, Ælfrith had taken her into the woods and had introduced her to the secrets of the mushrooms, then her mother - usually so cold towards her, so distant - had hugged her and ruffled her hair, asking if she had been a good girl while she was away.

That odd behavior got Hilda even madder, because she could have never guessed what was going on in that wicked mind of her.

“Stop worrying, little dove, I used the outmost caution. And...I played the villagers an old, little trick just to be sure no one could see me  _ borrow  _ a carriage.”

“And two horses”, promptly added Hilda, filling her mouth with a spoonful of hot broth. She wouldn’t have allowed her mother the pleasure of the last word. “Stealing is wrong, mother. You shouldn’t teach Milthryd to take what isn’t hers.”

“Nonsense. I’m not teaching anyone to steal, dove. I just brought home some useful commodity...perhaps you’ll need it too, anytime soon, who knows?”

_ You could _ , Hilda thought, striving not to groan in frustration. She has had enough of prophecies and visions of the future in which she was directly involved, but she couldn’t see for herself, and her mother’s attitude  _ \- all that grinning ambiguously and all the winks -  _ had already started to get on her nerves.

Surprisingly, it was Ælfrith who broke the tension, speaking before Hilda could even think about some snarky remark to use against their mother.

“Won’t you tell us about your travel, mother? Did it bear fruits?”

Maeve’s eyes sparkled with childish joy.

“Ah, yes! I visited four villages - the most distant one takes a couple of days with the old donkey, but with a proper carriage it should be a lot easier to get there - and none of them had a healer. They just had an inexperienced midwife, at very best, or women who still tried to cure fever with piss and dirt, so many people were happy to see a skilled healer at work. They need to be used to our presence, of course - we know better how suspicious those christians are - but, starting from tomorrow, we’ll have a bunch of folks to care for”, she paused for a while, her lips curving into a smile.  _ “It’s time for Milthryd to come with me and start her training. Don’t you agree, Hildy?” _

Hilda furrowed her brows. She didn’t like any of that, nonetheless she couldn’t help but agree.

What had happened to her mother during the time she had been away? Did she hit her head so hard against a tree she had gone nuts and started to consider Milthryd a true daughter, instead of an annoying pet who trotted at her side, in constant need of her approval? Did she had a vision, perhaps, about the great future of her younger child... _ or about the pathetic downfall of one of her elders, maybe? _ Her guts twisted at the thought, a bad feeling making digging his way through her flesh with its sharp nails of scary unknown.

When her mother’s piercing gaze finally fell on her, Hilda felt the irrational urge to storm away, although she wasn’t even sure of the reason of such a childish behavior.

The only thing she was sure about was that her mother and Ælfrith knew something about her future she didn’t, and that was enough to make her palms sweat.

  
  
  
  


“Stop sulking, Hild, or your negativity will make our beets rot.”

Hilda scoffed, giving her mother a frowny, accusating look. Maeve replied with a tender smile, petting her hair tentatively like she used to do when she was younger.

“Come with me”, she said, taking her hand and helping her on her feet. The sun had almost set behind the high trees and the sky was a breathtaking mosaic of violet and orange and blue. “What a beautiful woman you’ve become”, she whispered, pinching Hilda’s hips with her fingers. Yes, she thought, what a beauty was her wayward daughter, with the hips of a woman and the genuine smile of a girl. It was time for her little dove to fly on her own.

Hilda shook her head.

“Are you trying to appease me or something, mother?”

The older woman let out a throaty laugh.

“Of course not! It’s a honest thought. You’ve grown so much, I thought you would have appreciated hearing it from me.”

The healer shrugged. Her mother walked her to the threshold of the forest, where they found a spot to sit and watch as the twilight drifted into the night.

“Mother…”, she started, but Maeve shook her head as if she knew what she was about to say.  _ There’s a time for anything, but now it’s not the right time. _

“Now tell me, what happened while I was away? I want to hear everything. Ælfrith told me how skilled you’ve become at healing and that your work with Ivar was... _ stunning. _ ”

Hilda clicked her tongue. There were more important matters to discuss, instead of telling her the same things Ælfrith had already told.

“What kind of sick game are you playing with Milthryd, mother? She has spent her whole life clinging at my skirt because you thought she was too dumb to deserve your attentions and now you’re planning on training her in healing. I’m not buying it. Just spill the beans, all right? I’m tired of your visions and secrets. The trees won’t stop growing just because you say so, I’m not a girl anymore.  _ I have the right to know what’s going on!” _ , she ended up yelling.

_ She had never dared to raise her voice at her mother before. _

Maeve grinned, satisfied. Oh, what a woman she had become! So though and clever and brave. How much wasted potential, if she wasn’t to fulfill her destiny!

“Fine, then, no more secrets. You’re right, though, teaching Milthryd the art of healing isn’t just an act of pure motherly kindness…”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s admitting my judgment was wrong. I was wrong when I thought she couldn’t be smart enough to learn how to heal people...but you were right all along when you used to confront me about that.”

Hilda’s eyes widened in awe. If there was something her mother had never done in her life, that was admitting she was wrong, let alone agreeing with her daughter…

“Are you serious…?”, she found herself asking, too shocked to actually believe what she had just heard.

Maeve chuckled at her funny look.

“Yes, my dove, never been more serious. The Goddess sent me some visions of Milthryd’s future...she may be simpler than you and Ælfrith, but she’s gonna be a good healer, one day. She’s not as unworthy as I thought her to be…”

The younger woman couldn’t help but smile faintly. It had turned out that, at the end of the day, her sister had a path ahead to follow, that the Goddess had plans for her.  _ Maybe one day the wind of the North would have blown for her little sister too _ , she thought, and that idea made her lips tremble slightly.

“What about me?”, she finally breathed out. “Have you caught a glimpse of my future as well?”

Maeve took her hand in hers, her long nails gently scratching against her pale skin.

“We haven’t been talking heart to heart for a long time…”, she sighed.

“I don’t think we have ever had such intimate moments at all, mother…”

“Ah, this is not true. We used to talk a lot when you were young. We sat on the wooden docks the city, back in Sicily, and we ate oranges and dates until our stomach was begging us to stop. Do you remember?”

Hilda smiled softly. How could she forget? She had the time of her life in Sicily and sometimes nostalgia still carried her away.

“Of course I remember. You used to ask me what Mansour had taught me…”

The older woman nodded her head, closing her eyes to bring back that time in her memory.

_ The scent of the Mediterranean sea, its strong smell of salt and fish. _

_ The sailors with their curved daggers hanging from their belts, with their skin darkened and dried by the harshness of sea life. _

_ The chanted prayers spreading through the air five times a day, and the vibrant devotion of the muslims towards their god. _

“I wasn’t a careful listener, back then, I know. But now I’m listening…”

Hilda inhaled deeply the musky air.

If she wanted to talk about her future, then she had to bargain.

_ A secret for a secret. _

“Father came in my dreams”, she stated, stomping her foot against an abandoned rabbit hole. “It was the day I found the son of Ragnar Lothbrok and carried him home…”

Her mother grimaced. She wasn’t happy a ghost - though it was the ghost of her own father - had come to visit her daughter, however she made her best to hide her discomfort behind an encouraging smile.

“Well? What did he came for? A message from the Goddess, I suppose…”

“More or less...I think. I don’t know? He wasn’t angry or evil, though. I was frightened at first - you raised me in the belief of ghosts to be bearers of ominous messages and bad luck - but when he hugged me I suddenly remembered how things were back when he was alive...I still miss him, sometimes. Do you too?”

Maeve shrugged vaguely, but her eyes looked rather nostalgic, darkened by the shadow of a still vivid grief.

He was the only man she had ever truly loved and, after his loss, she was sure she had lost the ability to love another man like that.

“I learnt how to let go of the past, my little dove, but sometimes I can’t help but think about him...even if it has been a long time since I buried him. He loved me and I loved him back and he often told me that he wanted me to give him a lot of children to be proud of…”, she said, a smile ghosting on her lips. “I could never forget him...but he died and we didn’t. Life must go on and we shouldn’t dwell on past memories, even though they are lovely and good. Now please, what did he tell you?” 

Hilda nibbled at her lower lip.

_ “He told me that I have to follow the wind of the North. That it’s gonna lead me home” _ , she let out, as if she was getting rid of an unbearable burden.

Her mother nodded silently and Hilda wondered if she maybe already knew it, which was possible given her foreseeing abilities.

“Are you...going to follow your father’s advice, dove?”, she inquired, testing the waters.

The younger woman scoffed.

“I don’t even know what following the wind of the North means, mother. How can I follow an advice I can’t comprehend?”

Maeve let out a airy sigh.

“ _ You don’t want to comprehend it, it’s different. _ You’ve never wanted to try to be what the Goddess wants you to be...you don’t even consider your dreams as premonitions, little dove, and I honestly can’t understand why you keep doing this.”

Hilda didn’t know what to say. She was used to experience some strange, vivid dreams sometimes, when something important was about to happen, but she had always refused to fill them with meaning, pretending they didn’t mean anything at all. The dream of the battlefield - the one she had dreamed before Ivar came into her life - was still present and suddenly she figured out it had some sort of connection with the now infamous wind of the North,  _ yet it felt as if some tricky spirit had entered her mind and severed the red thread that connected the two things. _

“Ælfrith asked me...no, she begged me, actually, to stay away from my wind. To ignore it…”

“Ælfrith is powerful, Hild, but she’s still young. It’s easy for her to get frightened by her visions, even though I’ve tried many times to help her out with that.”

“I told her the same thing, that she was being driven by fear. But what if she’s right? She says that Ivar is dangerous and I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore. But she has already told you that, isn’t it? You spoke this morning…”

Maeve nodded, fumbling with the pocket she wore at her belt until she retrieved the chunk of a sweet root and offered a bite of the savory wood to her daughter.

“Ah, yes, she told me a lot of things. Including that you had a bad fight about Ivar…”

The healer’s cheeks turned to fire.

“We did”, she only said, hoping that her mother wouldn’t have confronted her about the whole thing. She didn’t, luckily.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to deal with the people we love the most”, she dearly said, tracing a small pattern on Hilda’s hand with the finger. “Because love blinds us to the point that we start to think we can actually give them a better life compared to the one the Goddess has traced for them, so we tend to forget that She has already a path for anyone of us to follow…”

The younger woman rested her head on her mother’s shoulder, eliciting a small, merry laugh.

“I don’t think that Ivar is a danger, mother. Really. What should I do?”

Maeve’s arm hugged her back.

“It’s time for you to leave the nest, my little dove. You have to learn how to fly with your own wings.”

“This means that I have to follow the wind, then.”

“This means that you shouldn’t listen to your sister, this time. Her judgment is clouded by fear... _ she still thinks that she can change what’s already written, but she’s wrong: no one can _ .”

  
  
  
  


Ivar gazed worriedly outside the window, his eyes only greeted by the vast darkness of the forest. The purplish dusk had already turned into the black night and he felt a knot in his stomach.

Milthryd tugged at his sleeve, rushing him to move his piece on the wooden gameboard. She had insisted to teach him how to play the odd strategy game they were playing, but Ivar’s mind was years away from their match.

The young girl said something, poking his ribs with her finger until he felt sore and, absentmindedly, moved his piece, eliciting a joyful squeal to leave her mouth.

Apparently, he had lost.

He pushed the damned game away with a groan and Milthryd chuckled, carefully tucking each piece away until her sister - Ivar had completely forgot her name, since he found her company pointless and slightly irritating - barked something from the doorframe, so Milthryd waved her small hand at him and flew away like some sort of weird, plucked bird disguised as a tiny human being.

The viking sat beside the hearth for a while, not knowing what to do.  _ Where was the healer? _ , he wondered, a chill running down his spine.

_ Even a kid knew that the woods weren’t safe, especially at night. _

He kept staring at the flames until their soothing dance became somehow ipnotic then he crawled to his cot stifling a yawn. Again, he found himself wondering where Hilda was.  _ Worse, if she was ever to come back. _

His heart skipped a beat at the thought, and it took him inhuman strength to stop himself from going out and look for her.

What was happening to him? He had never cared about someone like that, before. He let out a sigh. Some days he wasn’t sure whether he cared about his brothers or not, and they were his own flesh and blood. Hilda...he barely knew her, yet he felt more connected to her than he was connected to Ubbe or Hvitserk. She had took care of him dearly, selflessly, and not an ounce of pity for the miserable state of his legs had ever crossed her eyes: no one, except for his mother, had ever been like that with him.

That was enough to make Ivar grow attached. It was undoubtedly the most dangerous weakness for a man like him: it only meant that without her he would have been lost forever, and it wasn’t a risk that he was willing to take.

  
  
  
  


When Hilda and her mother finally came home, everyone was soundly asleep. Maeve kissed her goodnight, but she wasn’t ready to go to bed yet. Surely, talking to her mother had felt relieving, yet the feeling that there was something missing in her puzzle still lingered in a corner of her mind. She sat cross-legged next to Ivar’s cot for a while, running her fingers through his finally clean hair and listening to the gentle snoring coming from his nose.

Pecking a chaste kiss to his forehead, she let out a small laugh, suddenly realizing that, in facts, she hadn’t yet understood what the wind of the North was.

  
  
  
  


It was almost dawn when Ivar wake up, startled, sweat running down his face in cold rivulets.

His heart was pounding like Thor’s hammer in his chest and his head felt both inhumanly heavy and light at the same time.

Blinking, he could catch a glimpse of Hilda’s naked body under his eyelids, her thighs spread like a promise of utter pleasures to come.

A sob escaped his dry lips while he tried to chase it away and his groin felt on fire, his balls throbbing and aching, feeling impossibly tight in his overworn slacks.

The young viking’s eyes widened in awe, and he looked like a blind man who was seeing the sun for the first time.

_ His crotch was feeling oddly tight. _

Rubbing a hand over the rough fabric of his trousers, he felt the hardness of his cock.

_ It was hard. _

Not that kind of rock hard that once he had heard Hvitserk complaining for, but it was hard enough.

_ Stiff, straight and aching. _

Ivar felt like screaming with pure joy and the lewd images of Hilda eagerly sitting on his dick made him whimper.

So that was what a man felt? Could he consider himself a real man, now?

When the urge of screaming felt too much, he covered his mouth with his hand and bit down on his finger so hard the coppery taste of blood hit his tongue.

_ It wasn’t a dream. _

_ He was experiencing his first erection.     _


	6. How things can change in the blink of an eye

VI.

 

Maeve was the first to get up in the morning and, when she caught Ivar sneaking out of the house, she didn’t ask anything.

There was no need to, she thought, her lips curving into a smile. After all, the Goddess had shown her enough of her daughter’s future throughout the the years to trust Ivar would have come back soon.

First came the vision of the boat. Maeve could recall it very well, even though it had happened when Hilda was just a toddler, on a lazy summer afternoon: it was just the vision of a boat at the mercy of the waves, plain and simple. It had taken a lot of time to Maeve to figure out that strange vision wasn’t about herself, but her daughter.

When the family was living with the Moors, came the vision of the boy with the axe, with his blue eyes hardened by fury and his young features as stern as a man’s. Maeve couldn’t help but smile; she had recognized the boy of her vision as soon as Ivar had crawled towards her for the first time. He was the boy. The boy with the fire in his eyes and the axe in his hand.

Last came the dream of the battlefield, the one she had shared with her daughters. Hilda, standing in triumph and victory in a field of mud and bloody corpses. Saying that the dream hadn’t troubled her at first was a blatant lie but then the Goddess had spoken - “Let her go”, she had whispered in the wind - and Maeve had put the pieces of the puzzle together.

_ It was Hilda’s path. _

It was the wind blowing for her since the day she was born.

Even if she wasn’t entirely sure whether to follow it or not, she would have had to, eventually, although Maeve had always known her daughter had always been determined to ignore whatever sign the Goddess would have sent her.

Wayward, wayward daughter, she thought, shaking her head.

_ Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. _

She had already set everything up to be sure her daughter would have followed her wind: it was the Goddess herself who had traced her path, a long time before. The sacred duty of a good mother was to guide Hilda to do what was right.

  
  
  
  


Ivar crawled around the house for a while, unsure about what to do. His original plan was to find a comfortable, secluded spot to hide and try to jerk off to prove himself his cock would actually have served some purpose, but now that he was there it didn’t sound like a good plan at all.

A dumb plan at his best, actually.

The young viking huffed, plopping himself on a large rock. His whole groin was feeling sore and a dull ache pulsated between his legs: Hvitserk had told him that if a man wasn’t able to find any release, his balls would have eventually fallen off or someone would have had to cut them away because the pain would have been unbearable, but he wasn’t so stupid to buy such a bullshit.

His hand clutched at his crotch and he wondered again if the Gods weren’t playing a cruel trick on him, but the way friction made his dick jerk awake convinced him it wasn’t just a bad joke. 

His eyes widened in awe as if it was the first time and, setting aside all his doubts, he crawled behind a wild bush and stripped his pants down to his ankles, trying not to wince in disgust at the sight of his bony, prominent knees. He couldn’t say he was an expert at masturbation, but deep down he had a clue about what to do: he gave his cock a tentative squeeze, then proceeded to work his hand up and down the length, trying to recall some nice imagery to fuel his newborn desire.

Confusing glimpses of Hvitserk fucking a slave in the piggery, Margarethe’s tart body slipping out her dirty dress and Aslaug humming an old lullaby while a young girl washed her hair came to his mind, but he promptly chased them away.

_ Hilda. _

_ He had to think about Hilda because it was her who could make his cock work. No other. _

He thought about her full hips, her body naked in the warm sunshine, her malicious smile teasing and tempting, and a pleasant pressure begin to mount in his lower belly.

A satisfied grin curled his lips and his hand started to move more confidently.

_ He was doing good. _

  
  
  
  


When Hilda wake up, Ivar had just left for the woods. Ælfrith and Milthryd were still sleeping, their bodies tangled in their shared bed, and she let them be - although a part of her was still mad at Ælfrith for her behavior - for it had been a long day and they all needed some rest, walking straight to the common room trying to be as silent as possible.

She found her mother sitting on a stool, drinking milk with breadcrumbs from a large bowl.

“Good morning, little dove. Do you want some milk?”

Hilda frowned.

“I thought you hated to milk the goats…”

“I do, but I milked one. Speaking of goats, I think one is pregnant. At this pace, we could consider selling a couple at the market…”

The younger woman scoffed.

“You should have milked them all, can’t you hear they’re screaming?”, she chuckled, ignoring the simple idea of selling even one of her goats. Her mother dismissed it with a graceful wave of her hand.

“You can do it later yourself…”

Hilda gave her a puzzled look.

“Aren’t we going to visit a village this morning?”

Maeve smile, tucking a strand of her daughter’s hair behind her ear.

“You’re not coming, Hild. There’s nothing left for you to learn, by my side, and Ælfrith would be just as useful as you were at her age. It’s time for this family to build a new life without you in it, since your wind is blowing harder and harder upon us all.”

The young healer rolled her eyes, her mouth twisting into a slightly outraged grimace.

“But I’m not gone yet! I’m still here! I don’t even know if I’ll ever follow my wind, mother!”, she tried to muffle her yelling. “What am I doing in the meantime?”

“You do the chores and focus on feeling this damn wind, my dove. It’s frustrating to know that you are  _ deliberately  _ ignoring it just because you aren’t sure about what your future will bring.”

Hilda shook her head. She was definitely tired of hearing about blowing winds and Goddesses who couldn’t mind their own godly businesses. She glanced at Ivar’s cot - hoping to find him already awake and looking for his support- but she surprisingly found it empty.

_ He wasn’t there. _

Her heart started to race.

“Where’s Ivar?”, she asked, anxiety choking her words.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be back soon. I guess he just needed some fresh air, a boy like him doesn’t like confinement.”

Her mother’s word held some kind of ambiguous undertone and Hilda raised her brow.

“What are you up to, mother?”

Maeve shrugged, acting all innocent.

“Me? Don’t mind it, Hild. I’m only trying to help my little dove with her first fly”, was her laconic answer.

  
  
  
  


Ivar’s body jerked on the ground and a splash of thick fluid smeared on his belly. He collected some with his finger and gave it sniff, its smell strong and sour.

_ His cum. _

The product of his first orgasm.

He was feeling weary and light-headed, as if his brain was laying on a pile of soft, comfortable furs and his stomach was wrapped in a wool blanket. He brought his coated finger to his lips and sucked, tasting his own come: it was disgusting, nevertheless he was proud of himself.

After a long moment of lazy bliss, he started to pull himself together enough to look nothing more than his usual self, but his flushed cheeks and disheveled hair told a different story.

Crawling back home felt like a titanic effort: his first orgasm had been so intense it had dragged him of all energy, making him body feel pleasantly heavy and numb.

It was Maeve who opened the door for him, then offered him stale bread with honey for breakfast, and Ivar’s stomach growled.

“It’s almost time for you to go home, young viking”, she said, while he was eagerly chewing the rubbery bread. As much as the sole idea of leaving Hilda behind made his blood freeze in his veins, he couldn’t help but nod. Maeve seemed to know - or, at least, understand it - and she gave him a supportive smile.

“How can I go back?”, he simply asked.

“There’s a boat that’s sailing for the north, not far from here. It’s a trading ship, moor crew. It’s said that it’s sailing in four, five days, but if I know the Moors well enough - and trust me, I know them - they will sail in a week or so…”, she chuckled, remembering some good one from the past.

“Will they accept me on board?”

The woman shrugged.

“I’m good at convincing people, didn’t you hear that from my daughter?”

Ivar clenched his jaw.

_ Speaking of which… _

“Hilda…?”, he asked, not sure if he wanted Maeve to help him out or just give vent to his biggest matter of concern. _ There had been a time when all he wanted to do was to go home, collect the largest army the world had ever seen and then avenge his father, but now...all he could think about was how to deal with the only person outside his family who had ever showed him affection.  _

“Oh, you should tell her as soon as possible, _ if you want her to come with you _ , son of Ragnar”, she said, smirking.

The young viking’s heart skipped a beat.

_ He hadn’t even considered the possibility of taking her away with him yet. _

Maeve left with a smile and a “you should really think about what I’ve just said” and Ivar was too stunned by her words to really care about the fact that he had managed to drop his whole breakfast on the floor.

  
  
  
  


The goats were particularly nervous. Hilda patted each one on the head, before getting comfortable while milking the ones that needed to be milked.

Now that she was alone, she could clearly say she was pissed. 

Pissed at her mother for being already rearranging the familiy’s life without even bothering to at least  _ consider _ the idea that  _ maybe  _ her daughter wasn’t intentioned to give in to her wind at all, and pissed at the Goddess herself, for having set things up that way.

Many times she had asked the Goddess why it had to be her to be born in such a family, then she had thought about how actually common women lived and she had felt extremely ungrateful: christian girls all over the part of the world she had seen couldn’t read and write, and the most part had never seen anything that lied outside the wooden fence of the village they lived their whole life confined into. They were encouraged to marry early, not to enjoy sex and sometimes ending up death while giving birth...some of them were younger than Hilda herself, when they bled out because no one had the skills to help them through delivery.

The healer shook her head, the train of her thoughts already drifting on the equally unpleasant subject of her future.

Was she deliberately ignoring the call of her wind as her mother had said? She had to admit she might have been. Occasionally, the thin hair at the base of her neck stood up for no apparent reason, and the thrilling sensation of something coming up made a chill run down her spine. However, she just scoffed at that, the need of feeling at least in control of her own life prevailing.

_ Now she was tired of fighting against something that was supposedly inevitable. _

_ The Goddess had a plan for everyone, and said plan didn’t need the approval of the person concerned, nor their consent. _

“Was it so difficult to just ask me what I may have wanted from this life?”, she muttered under her breath, hoping that the Goddess was listening. The goat she was milking eyed at her suspiciously, probably thinking she was getting mad, then trotted away.

“Come back here, I’m not finished with you…!”, she complained, but the goat only bleated condescendingly at her.

Hilda sighed.

She needed to know what the future might have had in store for her and there was only one way she could have done it: she needed to communicate directly with the Goddess.

_ She needed to pray. _

  
  
  
  


“The bandages, please.”

Ælfrith handed her mother two long strips of clean linen soaked with vinegar. They were in a village, treating an infected arrow wound and Milthryd was watching closely as the yellowish, foul-smelling pus oozed from the swollen hole in the potter’s muscular arm. Their mother gave her a piercing, inquisitive gaze.

“Do you understand why I had to cut away all that skin, my sweet leaflet?”

The heated knife she had used was still on the table, brownish blood caked on its sharp blade.

“Yes”, Milthryd chirped, nodding her blonde head. “You cut it because it was infected, and if infection spreads it causes gangrene.”

“Which leads to a certain death, exactly.”

The potter’s wife flinched, making a quick sign of the cross and muttering a prayer to a saint under her breath. She looked rather young, with pretty blue eyes and dirty hair which could have been blondish, if properly washed. The potter was a sturdy man with a rough stubble on his chin and hands that could fit the whole wheel of a carriage in.

Ælfrith watched silently as her mother rubbed ointment on the cleaned wound, her mind centuries away from there. The couple paid their services with two geese that Maeve promptly loaded onto their chariot, then they rode to another small house, where a kid with delirious fever was waiting...if he hadn’t died in the meantime, of course.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts she missed a lot of time, snapping back into reality when she was already working with her mother, pinned down on the spot by her piercing gaze.

“You’re not focusing”, she said, and Ælfrith didn’t dare to do anything other than bow her head and sigh.

She noticed they were working in a gloomy, poor house, and she finally laid her eyes on a boy who looked rather close to death, with ragged breath and unnaturally glowing, wide eyes.

”Forgive me, mother”, she muttered, picking up a rag and pouring water into a bowl. Maeve slightly shrugged.

“He’s gonna die anyway”, she said. “His family asked for our help when it was too late. They prayed to their god, first, to their saints...what can a bunch of dead people do?”

Ælfrith didn’t know what to say, so she merely handed her mother water and rag, listening to the pitiful sobs coming from the orchard outside. In that forced immobility, her thoughts became too loud in her head not to be forced out.

“Why are you trying to persuade Hilda to go away with that Viking?”

“Now you’re talking”, her mother said, and there was a hint of annoyance in her voice. “You should know better what the Goddess wants from us, Ælfrith, your question makes no sense.”

The girl straightened her back. She was glad that Milthryd wasn’t there - although she wasn’t sure about where she actually was - because she would have asked further questions, and she wasn’t in the mood to deal with her need of clear, simple answers...mostly because she wouldn’t have had any answer to give her yet.

“You shouldn’t encourage her, mother, because what the Goddess had showed me was misery and death, and I don’t want Hilda to---”

The girl shut her mouth when her mother’s features turned to stone.

“Enough, Ælfrith. You and I, we cannot know how Hilda’s life is going to be. What we know is that the Goddess has plans for her, and we shouldn’t stand in her way.”

Ælfrith took a deep breath. The house smelled of fever, dust and burned stew. The stench of piss coming from the dying boy was so strong that she had to sniff the herbs she kept in a pocket in order to avoid emptying her stomach right there.

“I won’t let her go. She won’t be happy and I won’t let her waste her life away from us, or maybe ending up death because of  _ him _ ”, she spat.

Maeve shook her head.

“Can’t you understand, sweet child? You just can’t stop fate from simply happen. What’s written, will surely be. One way or another, even if you try to prevent it, fate just awaits...now, can you please focus on your work? This boy is dying, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help him have a dignified death.”

Ælfrith thought it was wiser to keep that conversation for a more appropriate time, so she shut her mouth close and did her best to follow her mother’s instructions. Working with her mother alone, as a substitute for her elder sister, convinced her of how much she couldn’t fit the expectation of being both a decent healer and a great seeress. It was one or the other.

_ How was she supposed to focus on her work while her sister was marching to her own destruction with the complicity of their mother? _

  
  
  
  


It was late in the afternoon when Maeve, Ælfrith and Milthryd finally got back home, and Hilda was already taking care of the dinner. Fresh herbs had been sprinkled on the floor, so the whole house smelled clean and welcoming. Hilda had busied herself with the chores and even a king couldn’t have had a house so polished. Ivar, on the other side, had watched her silently, his brows knitted, brooding about the seress’ words and still convincing himself about the fact that his cock could  _ actually  _ work and when he had offered to help her with the dinner, Hilda had almost jumped at the sound of his voice.

“Is there anything I can do?”

She was chopping a large, strong smelling root with whom stuff the belly of a fat, half-roasted rabbit. 

“It depends. Can you carry a plate on your back while crawling?”

Ivar snorted.

“You’re not funny”, he said, mildly outraged. She let out a small giggle and ruffled his hair with her free hand. Defeated, he finally sat next to the fire, watching as Hilda placed the roasting spit back on the flames and rolled gently to allow the flavor of the roots to spread through the meat. Ælfrith - he knew her as the weird sister - gave him a totally underserved dirty look and he couldn’t help but think she looked just like Sigurd, only with darker colors and a worse attitude. Milthryd was chatting with her mother, speaking faster than a racing horse as always, and he got lost in the stream of foreign words coming from her little mouth for a while, coming back to reality just in time to catch the plate Hilda was handing him.

When Maeve started to talk, even the fire itself fell silent and Ivar guessed she was saying something really serious when the short hair at the base of his neck stood with anticipation although he couldn’t understand a single word.

  
  
  
  


“I’ve made a decision…”

All of her daughters’ heads turned to her and Maeve couldn’t hide a satisfied smirk. Hilda looked particularly antsy and Ælfrith glared at her, concern pooling in her black eyes, while Milthryd simply waited, a sparkle of excitement burning under her skin.

“What kind of decision?”, Hilda finally found the nerve to ask. Her mother gave her a it’s-not-what-you-think kind of look that instead of reassuring her made her stomach twitch.

She had seen the same scene too many times not to make assumptions: the whole family reunited after dinner, the ambiguous, feline smirk on her lips...everything suggested that she was planning on moving. Nevertheless, it was Maeve, after all. Anything could have happened, or nothing at all. The Goddess had shaped her unpredictable and free, it was more than easy to get baffled when it came to her.

“You worry too much little dove, you’re going to have wrinkles all over your face in a couple of years if you insist on being so apprehensive…”

“Mother, please.”

Maeve clicked her tongue loudly.

“We’re not moving, not yet, if that’s your concern”, she finally said, and Hilda felt Ælfrith let out a relieved sigh. “I was just thinking”, she added, faking carelessness, “about the fact that we should all reconnect with the Goddess, given the latest events…”

Hilda opened her mouth to say something - her mother  _ must _ have sensed how badly she needed to pray, she had no other explanation for the fact that she was suggesting to make a ritual - but she realized that whatever she was going to say would have sounded awfully dumb and she wisely chose to stay silent. Maeve was now talking about how anything that happened, happened because the Goddess had wanted it, but she couldn’t pay attention to her words.

_ The last time they had prayed, Milthryd wasn’t even born yet, and they were starving in a godforsaken village perched upon the Alps, suffocated by the snow and the forest. _

Some years had passed, but she could remember that night very well: Maeve had asked that she and Ælfrith wore their most colorful dresses, making it clear that no one would have never dared to approach the Goddess while wearing dull, plain colors, and she told them to wait. “Wait for what?”, Ælfrith had asked, and Maeve had smiled, plunging her leg knee-deep in the soft snow. “You have to wait until the Goddess calls your name, Elf”, she had said, and Hilda had frowned, her nose red and frozen in the ice-cold night. “Does she speak, mother? Like...in the wind?”, she had asked, trying her best to keep her teeth from rattling. Patiently, Maeve had explained that no, the Goddess wouldn’t have called their names literally, but that everyone who desired to connect with the Her would have felt something like the stinging of a needle in their stomach. “That is how she calls your name”, she had said.

Hilda had wondered for quite some time how many worshippers of the Goddess were left, since the forced conversions to Christian faith had started, and when she had found the nerve to ask, her mother had just dismissed her question by saying that she didn’t know, but she was sure there were not many of them left.

Ælfrith pinched her arm and suddenly Hilda was back to the present, her gaze fixed somewhere in the room. Ivar frowned towards her and she mouthed a ‘later’, letting her mother finish her monologue.

Soon, they were all busy with preparations, buzzing here and there like restless bees, each one combing and braiding the other’s hair, dusting off their old, colorful dresses while Ivar watched silently, a look of permanent wonder in his blue eyes.

Hilda was the last one to finish. She wore a soft dress, its front all embroidered in blue and cream and gold, and Ivar thought that no woman in Kattegat - even the most coveted one - could have ever looked pretty in a dress like that, but somehow Hilda could...the thought made his cock stiffen into his pants and he felt a rivulet of sweat run down his spine.

She glanced at his face - his look was something between dumb and creepy - then giggled and stroke his cheekbone with her fingertip. 

“Stop staring, please, I know this dress looks...odd.”

He shook his head.

“It doesn’t. It suits you.”

“You sound like my mother, you know that?”

The viking groaned.

“So? What are you doing tonight? You put on a pretty dress and then what, exactly?”

Hilda smiled, showing off her set of unusually clean teeth.

_ A healer should always be clean, little dove. _

“I’m going to meet the Goddess, that’s the purpose of a pretty dress.”

Ivar flinched, his eyes widening in pure terror.

“Are you going to get sacrificed?”, he yelled, his voice booming through the wooden walls.

The young woman burst out laughing.

“No, of course not, why would I? We just have to pray...don’t you meet your gods too, when you pray?”

He looked puzzled, at first.

“No”, he cautiously said, though he was sure he had actually met a god when he was a kid - Harbard must have been one, he could ease the torturing pain in his legs merely with a touch and a whisper.

She ran her fingers through his hair.

“I’m not being sacrificed”, she said, trying to reassure him. “I swear. It’s just a ritual. We drink herbs and we see what the Goddess wants us to see, simple as that.”

Ivar nodded, sighing.

“Can I watch?”

“Of course you can. Just...don’t stand in our way. Things can get pretty intense, when the visions show up.”

Ivar roamed in the drawers of his memory until he found a glimpse of the great temple of Uppsala, with the priests with their faces painted red and black and their teeth chipped on the surface, painted red too. He thought about his mother, and her frenzy during the rituals, then nodded again.

Hilda kissed him, flying away when she heard her sister calling her name from outside the wooden house.

  
  
  
  


The moon was watching them, glowing pale, full, and they watched her back with anticipation. Both Maeve and Hilda had agreed that Milthryd was too young to participate, so she was sitting on a rock at a safe distance, pouting and restlessly swinging her little legs in the summer air. Ivar crawled to her side, absentmindedly carving some runes into a stain of graysh green moss with his sharp nails.

Hilda felt her guts twist and her mother winked at her, spilling some water and starting a chant as old as time itself, a song that buried deep into the young healer’s bones and made them vibrate and thrill, waltzing with the tremulous breeze coming from the sea. They had lit some small fires and their flames danced in the darkness, so when their mother started dancing with them, Hilda and Ælfrith couldn’t help but join her, hand in hand. They sang too, ageless words mixing up with the sounds of the forest, and when Ælfrith handed her elder sister a cup of something, she gratefully downed its content into her sore throat, until she couldn’t sing anymore and the chant became a distant muttering in her head filled with bubbles and incoherent dreams. Then, only then, Hilda felt the presence of the Goddess 

\-  _ tangible, close, oh so close _ \- and let go from her sister’s hand.

_ Listen to the whispers of the wind. _

_ Listen to the wind that comes from the North. _

Her eyelids fluttered for a while and when she opened up her eyes again she wasn’t there in the woods anymore. She was standing in the middle of a battlefield, watching the tremendous show of death playing at her feet.

People were dying and crying for mercy, but she wasn’t afraid  _ for she was the winner. _

She was victorious and alive, unmarred. An involuntary smile curled her lips. She wasn’t alone, though: when a strong gust of wind forced her to turn on her side, she saw Ivar, mischievously grinning at her.

_ Suddenly, it all made sense. _

The red thread connecting his sudden appearance in her life with the strange dreams  _ \- visions - _ she had experienced was sewed back.

She cupped his face with her hand and devoured his grin. It tasted like copper and war.

_ Ivar Ragnarsson was her wind. _

_ He had been the wind all along. _

  
  
  
  


Ivar watched closely as Hilda rolled back and forth on the ground, her mouth hanging agape in some kind of overexcited smile, as beautiful as ever despite her jabbering and nonsense whispering. Milthryd had run inside the small house frightened like a rabbit as soon as her mother had started to scream and kick, laying on the ground like a wounded warrior. Ivar had thought she was spineless, nevertheless he had kept the thought to himself.

Crawling carefully, the viking closed the distance between him and Maeve, mesmerized by the unnatural movement of her fingers in the air.

“I need to ask you something...seeress”, he whispered at her ear. She slowly turned her head to face him and he noticed that her eyes had rolled in the back of her skull.

“I know what you want to ask me, son of Ragnar”, she said, and her voice seemed to come from the very core of the earth itself. Ivar shivered.

“Then speak.”

The woman’s lips parted into a smirk that was all teeth.

“Your father’s time on this earth is coming to an end. He will soon die and, when a king dies, another shall rise. You want to know if you’ll equal your father’s fame or, perhaps, if your fame will overcome his. Mind my words, son of Ragnar: a great war is coming and it will surely bring you fame...but fame has a price, and you’ll pay it with blood and sorrow.”

Ivar scoffed.

_ He would have been glad to pay whatever price just to prove the world that he wasn’t just the poor, poor cripple son of Ragnar Lothbrok. _

“Happiness is overrated”, he stated, feeling that it would have been something Ragnar would have said. His chest puffed with pride.

The seeress’ head turned unnaturally, the bones in her slender neck popping loudly.

“Even hers?”, she said, pointing towards Hilda. Whatever remark Ivar would have dared to make, it got stuck in his throat, and he stared at her writhing figure with a heavy heart. When his blue eyes darted back to Maeve, she had already pulled herself together, sitting cross-legged and chewing something that smelled like piss and leather. 

“Go to sleep, son of Ragnar”, she unceremoniously said, exhausted. “I’m done with you for now.”

Still a bit shaken, Ivar obeyed.


	7. Spread your wings, little dove

VII.

 

“I thought you weren’t going to wake up anymore…”

Hilda let out a low grunt. Ivar’s voice came to her ears muffled, unspeakably distant.

“My head”, she groaned, managing with herculean effort to raise a hand and place it on her throbbing temple, the insides of her skull on the verge of blowing up. Through her blurred, half-closed eyes, she could see that Ivar was smiling softly, relieved.

“How do you feel?”

“As if an entire army had stepped on me, horses included…”

_ An army. _

_ She was sure that there was something concerning an army that she had to remember - it was essential that she remembered it - but her brain didn’t have enough strength to do that. _

“Your mother told you to give you this...for the headache”, he said, guiding a cup to her rigid fingers. Luckily, she was able to wrap them around the metal and hold it, instead of letting the precious herbal tea get wasted on the floor. 

Hilda downed eagerly the content of the cup and hoped for the best. It tasted funny, sour and bitter, like piss and musk. Her eyes burned when the liquid ran down her esophagus and she had to squint some tears away.

“Where did I sleep?”, she sloppily asked when the cup was empty.

“I guess you slept here, in the barn. It was your mother who told me where to find you.”

The young healer nodded absentmindedly. Fragments of the vision she had the night before flashed through her mind, making her head pound even harder.

“How...how did I end up here?”

“I don’t know. The last thing I remember was you, squirming on the ground as if you were bitten by a venomous snake...then your mother told me to go to sleep and I did.”

Hilda’s lips curved into a tired smile.

“She can get pretty persuasive after a ritual, isn’t it?”

Ivar crawled at her side, ending up slumped in the hay.

“How’s your head?”

“Hurts”, she mumbled, cuddling against his ribcage and nuzzling her dirty face into the crook of his neck. “I want to sleep.”

Ivar nodded slightly and petted her hair until she fell asleep again.

Despite not having taken an active part in the ritual, he felt drained. Sooner than he could realise, he was drifting into a quiet sleep too.

  
  
  
  


It was Ivar who woke Hilda up. It was already afternoon and they were both starving, but no one of them felt like getting up.

“Did you sleep?”, she asked, and Ivar placed a surprisingly soft kiss on her brow, while she wrapped her arms tighter around his muscular torso. 

He shrugged.

“I had nothing better to do, anyway…”

She stifled a laugh, then they fell silent for a while, simply enjoying each other’s company.

“I spoke with your mother last night”, he finally said, his fingers playing with a strand of the healer’s hair. She visibly stiffened at his side, frowning.

“I thought I asked you not to…”, she remarked.

He sighed heavily.

“It was something I needed to do.”

Hilda rolled her eyes.

_ Why was everyone so obsessed with what had yet to come? Why couldn’t they just live the moment, since they had the greatest fortune of not being harassed on a daily basis with prophecies and visions of the future? _

“So? What did she say? You’ll rescue your father and then you’ll bring this realm to its knees?”

Ivar’s lips curled into a faint smile.

_ Oh, how much he would have liked to hear those words from the seeress’ mouth. _

“She said...that it’s time for me to go back home.”

The young woman pursed her lips into a thin, pale line.

_ You knew this moment would have come, and yet...you’re not ready _ , a voice in her head said.

Again, she found herself thinking about an army, but the grief of knowing that Ivar was soon to leave was enough to cloud her mind.

“I had the feeling that this was about to come”, she whispered, inhaling deeply his scent of hay and musk.

_ Something she would have never forgotten. _

The viking’s hand traveled down to her back, his calloused fingers rubbing circles into her soft flesh.

_ “You can come with me.” _

He didn’t even need to consider what he had just said.

_ He wanted her to follow him. To go back home with him. _

Deep down, the thought that Kattegat was her legitimate home had worked its way through his mind. She was the daughter of a viking, therefore she was a viking herself.

He was sure she would have been brave enough to be one. Fierce enough to face he himself up, even.

Her eyes widened in shock at his words. Her lower lip trembled slightly, a barely visible murmur, but whatever she wanted to say, it just got stuck between her teeth.

“Ivar…”, she started, but he promptly silenced her by slamming his lips on her mouth rabidly, somehow needy.

He would have never accepted a ‘no’ as an answer.

The healer was puzzled by his urgency, at first, however she kissed him back with the same raging passion, her body and her mind disconnected.

It wasn’t the right time nor the right place to indulge like that, but when his fingers reached her thigh under the dirty dress,even her grumbling brain had to give up and raise its hands in surrender.

“I thought you couldn’t...you couldn’t…”, she babbled when the viking’s calloused hand grabbed at her tender flesh in a way that could mean only one thing. Sex.

_ I thought you couldn’t have sex _ , she would have said, if the words hadn’t died on her parted lips.

“I couldn’t”, he simply stated, and she was so busy grinding against his warm skin that she didn’t inquire any further. She just chuckled under her breath and chose to roll with it, letting his clumsy digits explore her inner thigh, rummaging awkwardly under her skirt until he finally found what he was looking for and gave her some kind of lost puppy look that made her heart melt in a puddle of something that she couldn’t even name.

Ivar’s lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but she shook her head and guided his hand until he found a comfortable pace to keep up with, a soft circling tempo that made Hilda’s mouth go sand-dry with pleasure.

It had been a long time since she had her last close encounter with a man, but her body was more than willing to experience such a delight again.

“You’re good at this”, she breathed out after a while, her hands roaming the bulge on the front of his slacks. He hissed when she finally freed his cock and he had to focus really hard not to come in her hand at the first, tentative strokes.

When he had enough of that, he gently bit her on the shoulder, tugging at her sleeve until it slipped down and revealed one of her round breasts. He lapped her nipple with the flat of his tongue and she jolted, positioning herself into his lap and slowly sitting on him, her wet warmness enveloping him completely.

When she finally started to move, Ivar felt like the golden gates of Valhalla were opening right in front of his eyes.

_ Sex was definitely, definitely better than what his brothers had told him.  _

He tilted his head back and let her ride him until his legs started to hurt.

When Hilda was reaching her climax, though, the vision she had the night before bloomed under her flickering eyelids, folding out completely while she let out a cry of pleasure.

_ The battlefield. _

_ The victory. _

_ She and Ivar together, side by side. _

_ Her wind howling.  _

_ The wind of the North. _

_ That was her path. _

He came shortly after, muffling a whimper, his ribcage trembling under the furious thumping of his heart.

“I…”

The healer abruptly interrupted him.

It was her turn to speak.

_ “I’m coming with you”, _ she said, without hesitation. “I’m coming with you.”

Outside, she could hear the wind rustling through the leaves.

For the first time in her life, she really knew the Goddess was pleased.

  
  
  
  


“How are you going to tell them?”

Hilda hit vigorously the bread dough against the wooden table to facilitate the rising.

Sighing heavily, she wiped away some sweat from her forehead, leaving a trail of dark, roughly ground wheat on her clammy skin. The air was so hot it reminded her of the impossibly long summer afternoons in Sicily. It was the only thing she didn’t actually miss of her old life down there.

“I don’t really know how, actually. I suppose I’ll just drop it and face the consequences then...mother won’t object. She thinks that I have a wind to follow, no matter where it leads me. My sisters will be the ones who can’t accept my decision, though. Ælfrith’s going to argue, most likely. And Milthryd...she’s going to cry...cry a river, I suppose. I mothered her when our real mother simply forgot she existed, so she’s going to think that I’m abandoning her…”

Ivar gave her a dirty look from his spot on an unstable wooden stump.

“Are you already regretting your decision?”

The healer shook her head.

“Of course not. It’s just...it’s difficult to tell the people you love the most - and that love you the most - that you’re leaving, even if you’re doing that to fulfill your destiny.”

The viking sighed.

The only person he was hardly able to say goodbye to had been his mother, for he loved her with all his heart, but he couldn’t understand why people valued family so much. He didn’t, nor did his father or his half-brother Björn...then why was she being that difficult?

He was sure he would have never left her behind - not even if the Allfather himself would have asked him to - and sometimes that thought was so overwhelming he firmly believed he had lost his mind.

_ Was that how the infamous being in love thing was like, then? _

He had never had the chance to ask his father, but if he knew him well enough he was sure he would have dismissed that feeling as much as he dismissed happiness, because sometimes they were so much interconnected you couldn’t say where one began and the other ended.

“You know, when my father asked me to come here with him, I was happy even though my mother had told me I wasn’t going to survive. I left because finally I could do something for real, on my own, instead of watching my life passing me by like a poor helpless boy who couldn’t do anything without being helped or closely watched”, he stated, in an awkward attempt to lift her spirit.

Hilda gave him a faint smile.

“I’ve spent my whole life on a constant run, since my father had died. My mother is a hopeless wanderer, never satisfied, always ready to move and move again. All I ever wanted was a place I could call home…”

“And I’m giving you one. Kattegat will be your home...I’ll be your home.”

She nodded, even if she wasn’t sure yet whether she was doing what was best for her or not. The Goddess had spoken, that was right, but was it enough to let go from everything she had known so far? Was it enough to start a life without the guidance of her mother, although she wasn’t always the wisest one of the family?

“The closest thing I had to a home was Mansour’s villa in Sicily. The alleys of the city, its docks, the market...there I really felt at home…”

Ivar brushed his fingers gently against her soft hip, digging his fingers into the welcoming flesh fondly, eliciting a chuckle to escape from her lips.

“But Kattegat is your  _ legitimate _ home, you were born a Viking...as much as you don’t look like one, you act like one. Your father would be proud.”

Hilda ripped away a small piece of dough and molded it into a ball, then threw it at him playfully. He, however, didn’t take the hint and simply frowned, asking himself why she was wasting food like that, so she wondered if he was used at playing at all.

“Do you really mean what you’re saying?”, she asked then, an uncertain smirk on her lips.

Ivar nodded.

_ It was time for the little dove to start flying on her own. _

  
  
  
  


The family was chatting loudly at dinner, the hearth unnaturally out because of the exceptional temperatures. Maeve had her sleeves rolled to her elbows, complaining about how much the so called healers were uncultured in that bloody part of the world. Hilda was sure that all the eyes in the room were staring at her and she could feel Ivar’s gaze burning under her skin. For a moment she entertained the idea of procrastinating, waiting to tell her family that she was leaving, but an annoying voice in her head was mocking her, calling her a coward.

Hilda was many things, but she wasn’t a coward.

When Ivar poker her with his spoon - she didn’t know if he had done so intentionally or not, though - she just stood up as if she was going to sing and just said what she had to say.

“I’m going to leave.”

Plain and simple, no useless finery, words streaming out of her mouth firmly and calmly despite the knot in her stomach and the cold sweat running down her spine.

As she expected, it was Ælfrith the first to react, and she did it quite bitterly and dramatically, slamming a fist against the blackened hearthstone.

“You’re making a mistake”, she hissed, her teeth so gritted Hilda could have sworn she had heard them screeching, arch against arch. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it was nearly impossible.

“I knew you would have said that”, she finally whispered, her lips curling into a sad smile.

Her younger sister shook her head, unable to contain her disappointment.

“And still you won’t listen to me.”

Maeve sneered under her breath -  _ her silly, silly daughter was trying to change her sister’s fate although it had already been sealed _ , she thought, trying to figure out when did Ælfrith become so pedant - and earned a dirty look. Milthryd, who had been in a stunned silence so far, started to weep quietly, drying her eyes with the sleeves of her pretty dress.

“See? You made her cry”, stated Ælfrith, her plush lips pressed together in a thin line.

Hilda tightened her jaw.

“This is not fair.”

“What’s not fair, sister”, she almost yelled, spilling some of her dinner on the floor, “is that you’re leaving us for him!”

Milthryd burst out sobbing louder, then, and Hilda’s heart grew heavy with sorrow.

“Little bird”, she gently called then. “let’s take a walk, shall we?”

The girl gave her a hurt look, her eyes watery and dim. Hilda had to force her on her feet like a ragdoll, for she didn’t dare to move. She cursed herself for having caused her such a grief, but it was too late to go back about her decision.

_ Irrevocable was such a fatal word it gave her the chills. _

She glanced at her mother and Maeve vaguely looked away, as to say “It’s yours decision alone, my sweet little dove, deal with it”.

She wondered then if she was doing the right thing, but still the answer eluded her.

“Only time can tell if you were right or wrong”, her mother used to say whenever they had to face such a life-changing choice. Hilda hoped that she wasn’t wrong all along.

  
  
  
  


“Don’t go away…”

Milthryd waited to be outside the four walls of their house to speak so directly, tugging at her sister’s skirt with desperate hands, as if to make sure she was still there.

“I don’t want you to go!”, she ended up shouting when all that sadness couldn’t be kept confined in her small bones anymore. 

Hilda felt her stomach tie into a tight knot at her miserable voice, her heartbreak so visible it would have made rocks weep.

“But I have to, my sweet little bird, can you understand?”

That was just a fancy, rather empty catchphrase, though. She couldn’t understand either completely why she was doing that - was it for Ivar, really? Or was it just a way to fulfill her pious mother’s expectations? - but giving her sister an answer was better than to admitting she wasn’t sure yet whether she was doing the right thing or not.

Milthryd shook her head vehemently.

“I can’t understand. Why can’t he just stay here with us? You like him, Elfry has told me. You can teach him our language and he can travel with us when mother wants to move…”

The healer couldn’t help but smile at her words. She was just four years old, after all, but what if she was right? Wouldn’t that be the safest choice? Surely, it was safer than traveling on her own to a place she could barely remember from her father’s romanticized goodnight stories.

To her, home was a place of snow and fjords, with elves and fairies hiding in the woods, only visible to the sharpest eyes.

Running out of catchphrases and excuses, she bent over to cradle her sister in her arms.

“I can’t stay, Mil. He can’t stay. Our fate is far from here...I have to follow that wind that blows for me, sweet bird, and one day you will too.”

“No”, she whined into Hilda’s hair, sobbing.

“You will, when you’ll grow older. A wind blows for everyone and when you’ll be a young, brave woman, you will understand why I have to do this.”

“I don’t want the wind to blow you away”, she complained.

_ I am breaking her heart,  _ Hilda thought. And that thought alone was enough to tore her own to pieces too.

“It’s not...it won’t last forever. The Goddess will make us meet again, I’m sure of that, because she knows that we love each other’s so much we couldn’t bear to spend an entire lifetime separated…”, she whispered and Milthryd, her sweet little bird, nodded in the crook of her neck. “Until we are together again, think about me: we’ll meet in a dream and I will fill you in with all my adventures.”

The little girl sniffled loudly.

“Why does Elfry keep telling that you won’t be happy, if you go away?”

Hilda tried a tentative smile.

“Ælfrith is just sad because I’m leaving. However, here’s a thing that I want to teach you before I go: you don’t have to always believe in what she says. She can be wrong too, despite her powers.”

“So...it’s not true that you’ll be unhappy, right?”

_ Wight,  _ Mil had said, her voice distorted by the tears and the sadness.

She shook her head.

She wasn’t going to be unhappy.

She was going where she was destined to be since the day she was born, it would have been unfair from the Goddess to send her in a place where she would have been miserable instead of merry.

“No, this is not true.”

_ Was it? _

  
  
  
  


Ivar watched her throw some clothes in bulk inside a large sack, discarding the most worn-out and the ones that looked discolored or had been patched multiple times. They were set to leave before sunrise, and maeve would have played her best games to make the moors accept them on board. When Hilda discharged a bright blue dress, Ivar took it in his hands and threw it in the small pile of clothes she was going to bring with her.

“”Keep this one. You look beautiful when you wear bright colors...all the people in Kattegat should see that.”

She smiled softly, rubbing circles into the thin, luxurious fabric and feeling its microscopic flaws under her thumbs. “The dress for a queen”, someone had said, but she couldn’t remember who or where, or neither if it was really hers or one of the many dresses her mother had passed to her throughout the years.

“Don’t you think that they will see me as a foreigner, if I dress in bright colors while they don’t?”

Ivar sneered, brushing his calloused palms against the soft, finely sewed skirt.

“Who told you that we do not dress in bright colors?”

Hilda shrugged.

“My father, who else?”

“Our land has changed a lot, since your father left”, Ivar said, unable to hide his proud smirk. “Kattegat has become the most important trading center of the whole region, we do not dress in dull rags anymore…”

Hilda didn’t argue any further and neatly folded the blue dress before packing it up. It was the only one to receive such a caring treatment.

Ivar smiled gleefully.

“Are you ready?”, he asked.

Taken aback, she only gave him a court nod.

She wasn’t sure to be ready, but he didn’t need to know about it at all.

  
  
  
  


No one had significant objections when Ivar simply crawled into Hilda’s bed to sleep with her. Milthryd blubbered for a while - she wanted to sleep with her sister for the last time -, at least until Ælfrith literally dragged her to their shared bed and lulled her to sleep with a song in that harsh language Ivar wasn’t familiar with yet.

Hilda snuggled against Ivar’s chest and he tensed a bit, not used yet with all that intimacy yet enjoying the moment.

“I think I am afraid”, she softly spoke and Ivar tilted his head, lifting her chin enough to make their gaze meet. In the dim light of the moon, the healer’s eyes looked colorless and ghostly, as timeless as her mother’s or her sister’s.

“Afraid of what?”, he asked, baffled, as if she had asked him to pick up the only safe plant in a meadow of poisonous leaves.

He thought that she had no reason to be afraid. She was going home, amongst her people. Was there something to be scared about in that?

She rubbed her scalp against his chin like a greedy cat. He was still beardless like a boy, save some sparse hair above his upper lip.

“It’s going to be my first travel without my family. A part of me feels...lost”, she breathed out, listening to the gentle sound of Milthryd’s snoring.

That was one of the many things she would have missed. Milthryd’s snoring. Ælfrith’s restless muttering, that she had sometimes quieted down holding her sister into her arms and whispering sweet nothings to her ear. Her mother’s weird habit of getting up sometime during the night to check on them and give each one a kiss while chanting some ancient words on their sleepy foreheads.

_ Maybe home wasn’t a place at all. _

_ It was just caring hands and a warm hearth, wherever it was. _

“You don’t have to feel lost. You’re not going to be alone...we’re going to be together.”

Ivar felt that word so unfitting with his mouth, its sound weird to his ears.

He was so used with the ancestral loneliness his condition caused him that he had never felt the real urge of being with someone before. Having someone by his side had never been one of his priorities before he met the healer. The healer who didn’t pity him and even showed him care and affection.

_ Kattegat was his home, it was true, but it was the same place where everyone feared and despised him. Hilda didn’t. _

That was why he needed her by his side.

_ She looked at him with different eyes, unclouded from judgement or pity. _

“I know”, she said, after a long pause, her voice as feeble as the rustling of the leaves outside the window.

Ivar felt the weight of her soft body press further against his chest but, despite the uncommon warm weather, he didn’t push her away even though he felt droplets of sweat running down the back of his neck.

“Don’t be afraid”, he just whispered, placing a small kiss on her hair.

He felt her body relax against his, then sighed.


	8. The winds of the North

VIII.

 

“Mother keeps saying that I mustn’t try to convince you but...is there any chance you might change your mind and listen to me?”

Hilda looked at Ælfrith with a sad smile on her face. She was wearing a linen, tattered nightgown and her long hair fell loose on her shoulders in thick, black strands. Her eyes looked as timeless as ever, darker than the dissipating night, but the subtlest reddened scleras showed that she had spent most of the time crying silently, maybe biting her hands not to make the faintest sound. Soon the sun would have peeked from behind the hills and another day would have started.

_ Another day of common life changes. _

“Was there any chance for me to convince you not to follow your path and become a seeress, when we were kids?”

_ She was still a kid,  _ Hilda thought bitterly, chewing at her inner cheek nervously.

Ælfrith rolled her eyes, revealing her true age in one simple gesture. The healer knew that, for how much unnerving it was, she would have missed that terribly, once she was far away.

_ Once they had parted...maybe forever. _

“It’s not the same, sister...I had no choice, but you have one.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Elf. Neither do I.”

Ælfrith groaned in disagreement, scaring some early birds that flew away from their hidden spots in the brush.

“Why not? You can choose to stay.”

The young healer brushed her sister’s shoulder, gently shaking her head, and Elf hugged her. She was growing tall and soon she would have been taller than their mother. Sometimes Maeve would talk about her father, describing him as a broad-shouldered tall man with a long beard and languid, sad eyes. They had been together for only one week, but she strongly suspected he had a wife somewhere in Damascus, maybe children even. 

“I will miss you”, the younger girl whispered with a sob, and Hilda tightened her grip around her small waist.

It was Maeve who interrupted their endless goodbye, whistling in their direction with the sharp impatience of a child.

Ælfrith let Hilda go suddenly, as if she was holding onto a burning ember, straightening her back and wiping away the tears from her face with a swift move of her fingers.

“Go, now. You know mother, she doesn’t like to wait.”

“Just...one last thing. One last word about the future…”

The younger girl frowned gravely.

“Tell me.”

Hilda had to ponder her words thoroughly before speaking her mind. She was about to ask a fairly legitimate question, but she wasn’t sure she would have liked the answer, nor if she really wanted to know it.

_ “Will we meet again, sister?” _

Elf stood silent for a while, then just sighed heavily.

“I don’t know. I’m afraid we won’t, though.”

The elder sister only nodded her head, clutching her fingers around the rough fabric of her skirt.

_ That wasn’t the answer she had hoped to hear. _

  
  
  
  


Ivar sat in the back of Maeve’s stolen carriage, watching as Hilda said her touching goodbye to her sister. The sun was rising, a bright red ball slowly rising from the eastern hills, and he felt a stinging surge of nostalgia for his home, for the Great Hall always so crowded and full of life even in the roughest of winters, when everything else outside froze to death. Nostalgia for his mother, the only family he had ever had beside Floki and Helga, even if Helga looked too intimidated by his presence in her house to be really called family.

And his father, oh, how much he missed his legendary father, rotting in some humid cellar at the mercy of a filthy christian king, a treacherous beast who had killed many innocents just because he wasn’t able to share a tiny patch of his land.

He would have payed his treachery with blood, no more sharing for his cherished lands, he thought crushing a blade of fragrant hay between his thumbs. He was Ivar the Boneless, and he would have lead the most massive army the world had ever seen to Ecbert’s very lands. No more sharing, oh no, because he would have conquered it all.

He would have shown that christian pigs that their dead god would have done anything to protect them from the wrath of Hermoðr and Hödr, and Thor and Odin the Allfather.

He would have had Hilda by his side and he would have been invincible, he thought, a satisfied smile blooming on his lips.

“Do you think that my father is still alive?”, he asked then, and Maeve - who was intently staring at her daughters hugging on the threshold of the house - nodded.

“He is”, she said. “But there isn’t much time left for him to spend in this realm...soon he’s going to be in Valhalla, Ivar, I dreamt about it last night. The Goddess showed me Aelle, the first king he has defeated here, throwing him into a snakepit...”

The muscles in Ivar’s face twitched in a mute expression of rage and frustration.

“Both Aelle and Ecbert will suffer my revenge”, he said, and Maeve nodded her head. 

Hilda was walking towards them with her back unnaturally straight and a new glimpse of determination in her eyes. Her skirt was trailing behind her in the grass and by the time she would have reached the carriage it would have been soaked with morning dew.

“Whatever you have to do to achieve your destiny of greatness, do it”, Maeve whispered, and her voice sounded terribly like an admonition, “but always remember that she’s at your side. You can dismiss your own happiness as a petty human feeling you’ll never care about, not hers. Otherwise, you’ll end up alone, son of Ragnar. Wasn’t that, in the end, your father’s fate?”

For a moment, Ivar considered the idea of arguing - he was a natural polemicist, a master at arguing - but with Hilda approaching he found the idea counterproductive and gave up shrugging.

Maeve, however, wasn’t of the same advice.

“If you want to be like your father”, she said wisely, “there’s no need for you to make the same mistakes.”

  
  
  
  


The pathway to the nearest town was tree-lined, and the roots bulging from the ground made the stolen carriage shake and jump frequently. Maeve was singing an old Norse song, stuttering over some particularly difficult words as Ivar chuckled under his breath at her spelling mistakes.

Hilda’s sight was wandering restlessly through the endless procession of ancient trees and mangy bushes, the air still smelling of the fading, humid night. It smelled like boar bristles, salt, mushrooms, dirt. She could smell the sour, rotting scent of a nearby pond where she and Ælfrith had caught frogs for the dinner the previous summer.

She had thought Wessex could have been her home, but now she was leaving just as she had left the barren Sicily and the industrious German Lands, with its wooden huts scattered all around the suffocating forests.

As if he was sensing her thoughts, Ivar curled his fingers around her shoulder, applying a light pressure to draw her attention.

“We’re going home”, he said, gleefully.

She smiled.

“Yes, we are.”

  
  
  
  


The city wasn’t any bigger than a large village, but its walls were massive and they were built in stones and rubble. It was nearly afternoon and the temperatures were almost unbearable, the thick crowd packing on the docks making it almost impossible to breathe the hot, motionless air.

Maeve looked visibly disgusted of all that humanity that carried along the stench of stale sweat and caked dung: she could tolerate the fetor of the ill ones she took care of, but not the stench of healthy, living people. That was something Hilda had never understood about her. Ivar, still sitting in the carriage, occasionally cast dirty glances here and there, muttering curses - Hilda had heard something like “nasty pigs” and “filthy christians” - under his breath, looking either like a poor, angry fool or a creepy dangerous lunatic.

_ Maybe he is, after all, a creepy dangerous lunatic,  _ whispered a malicious voice in her head. The healer rolled her eyes at herself: surely, a part of her was scared to death of what awaited across the sea, of who Ivar would have ended up being while in his own land, but the more adventurous part - the one she had inherited from her mother - was literally gleaming with joy and excitement.  _ Still, she could clearly remember that Mansour had told her that a choice taken hastily, out of instinct, could hardly be the best choice. _

She decided to ignore it, however, sighing loudly.

“I’ll miss this”, she said, and Ivar frowned at her.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll miss my mother and my sisters. Wessex, even, I think. But it doesn’t matter... _ a dove must learn how to fly on her own, at some point” _ , she stated, and Ivar’s lips curled up in a bright smile.

Could someone with a smile like that be the ruthless warrior she had seen in her vision? Could someone whose smile could brighten up the darkest night be the monster her sister had pictured?

Maeve, who was gone to talk with the crew of the ship that was supposed to sail north, called her name loudly, waving her arms up in the air as if she was dancing madly to a music that she alone could hear. Hilda giggled and gently guided the horses through the crowd, leading them in front of a big, sturdy boat with colorful sails.

Arabic chattering caressed her ears as soon as she was close enough to catch a word or two.

“So, mother?”, she asked.

Maeve was smiling triumphantly, the outcome of her mission easily visible on her young-looking features.

“You’re both on board”, she gloated. “They were in desperate need of someone who could teach them some norse and you and Ivar can do it perfectly. Your arabic shouldn’t be as rusty as mine, dove, am I right?”

Hilda nodded.

Mansour used to say that a language, like swimming, couldn’t ever be forgotten completely: once learned, it would have left a mark that couldn’t ever be erased, nor by the unforgiving time, nor by the equally unforgiving distance.

“What did you say to persuade them?”, asked Ivar, and his cunning eyes looked genuinely interested in the answer. He was sure that Maeve was more than the seeress she claimed to be, and he strongly suspected that her green, charmy eyes could bewitch anyone into doing what she wanted. “I heard that Moors like to negotiate for hours before making a satisfying deal...”

Maeve gave him a smug look.

“Trust me, you do not want to know it. Also, Hildy does question my methods often, she wouldn’t approve.”

The young healer rolled her eyes, but she was amused more than annoyed.

“You’re right, I don’t approve.”

The seeress couldn’t help but think about how proud she was of her daughter. One day she would have learn to love and cherish the gifts the Goddess had given her at birth, accepting them as a part of her nature...that wasn’t a hope, that was nothing less than certainty.

“Now let me say goodbye before you both sail away”, she said, gently brushing her index finger against Hilda’s cheek and swaying her hips towards Ivar. “We shall wait for Omar before getting you on board. He’s the captain’s son, it’s him who needs your lessons…”

The viking, who was unsure about what he was supposed to do, just nodded.

“Goodbye, seeress maeve”, he said, clearing his throat.

She placed her small, working hands on his shoulders and pulled him in a strong, unexpected hug.

“Last night I had a dream”, she whispered to his ear. Ivar felt a shiver run down his spine despite the hot weather when her lips curled into a smile against his skin. “But I can’t recall it. Remember York, son of Ragnar, it’s a large city built on a river, in Northumbria. Just remember its name. York.”

Puzzled, he nodded.

_ York. _

He didn’t know what to do with that information, but he was sure he would have known when the time was right.

Finally, Maeve let him go and walked to her daughter.

“Mother…”, she started, but the seeress promptly silenced her.

“Will you let me tell you a thing or two, now that you’re going away? Without interruptions or snarky remarks?”

Hilda smiled, feeling some tears already tickling the corners of her eyes.

“Am I allowed to frown when necessary?”

Her mother chuckled quietly.

“You won’t need it, I’ll be quick.”

“Then speak, mother, before the Moors sail without us…”

Maeve brushed the back of her hand on her daughter’s sweaty cheek and Hilda couldn’t help but let a sob escape her slightly parted lips.

“Don’t cry, my little dove, a long and full life is waiting for you across the sea. When you’ll get far enough from my oppressive shadow - don’t try to deny it, I know very well how much my presence can be overwhelming sometimes and how did this shape and affect your behavior - all of the generous gift the Goddess has given you, the same gifts you have always refused to acknowledge to spite me, will bloom and you’ll finally realize you’re much more worthy that you’ve always believed. Tough times are coming for you, I won’t hide it, my dove, but promise me that you’ll never forget who you are…”

“It’s the war, isn’t it?”, she whispered, and her mother wrapped her arms around her waist in a tight embrace. 

“The day you were born, I looked in your eyes and all I could see was war. Not a losing war, though, I saw victory and conquering, therefore I chose to call you Hilda, like a war fought by heroes...a war that cannot be lost.”

Hilda nodded, not even trying anymore to keep her tears in. Her cry was silent, though, somehow discreetly dignified.

“I’ll keep that in mind…”, she said, her chest heaving. Maeve smiled softly and catched a large tear with the pad of her thumb.

“Now, sweet child, your wind is calling. Maybe we’ll meet again, you can never say never about such things...ah! I’m planning on moving, I wanted you to know that. I’m getting really tired of these Saxons, this grime and this pale sun, so we’re moving to Frankia first, then to Spain. Tell Ivar that he can lead his war without worrying about our well-being”, she added, giggling, but her eyes got watery too.

She was a mother, after all, and it’s always painful for a mother to see a child go his own way...even if it’s the natural state of things.

“Promise me that you’ll travel as safely as possible and that you won’t starve, please…”

Maeve sneered. As if she wanted to starve again as it had happened during their journey through Italy…

“We won’t. I’m more prepared, this time, I can assure you. As to the travel, we’ll pretend we’re Christian pilgrims trying to reach the Holy Land and everything will turn out just fine.”

Hilda nodded, but a gloomy thought crossed her mind.

“What about Milthryd? Are you going to give up on her as soon as you find out she doesn’t fit your expectations?”

“No, of course not. I may act as if I’m heartless, sometimes, but I’m not. I haven’t been a good mother to her so far - let’s say I haven’t been a mother at all - but the Goddess has opened my eyes: she has showed me that your sister is going to be a good healer, someday, and she had reprimanded me for having thought Milthryd was ungifted...”

Sometimes Hilda herself felt ungifted. Her mind was about to drift off down the memory lane when two sturdy sailors approached her carriage. One wore a loose, sand colored shirt, while the other had a turban on his head, sticking to his dark skin with all the sweat on his forehead. behind them stood a tall, dark haired man dressed in silk and brocade, who commanded them in arabic to arrange “the crippled boy” on the boat.

Hilda winced at his lack of respect towards Ivar, nevertheless she kept it for her. He gave her a warm, open smile, while informing her he was Omar and that he traded spices and fabric, mostly, but also byzantine and egyptian perfumes, exotic animals and any sort of trinket that could have interested anyone who lived norther than Rome. His features were charming, blessed with that kind of harmonious specularity that only mediterraneans owed: that was enough to make Hilda - and her mother too, surprisingly! - blush with embarrassment. 

The two sailors, then, grabbed Ivar by the waist and walked with his weight on their sides to the boat. Omar gently pushed Hilda, telling her that it was time to go and that he was very happy to have someone to help him with the unfamiliar norse language.

He spoke slowly all the time, his voice sounding like warm honey spreaded on a slice of buttered bread in a festive day, and the healer was glad he was keeping his speech as simple as he could in front of two non-native speakers.

She gave her mother a look that was both anxious and excited and Maeve smiled fondly.

“Make your mother proud, my sweet dove, don’t let your gift get wasted...even in the darkest times.”

She let out a long sigh, thinking over Ælfriths warnings about her forthcoming unhappiness. She had turned out to be right in the end, or so it seemed. What her mother had said about ‘dark times’, ‘tough times’ wasn’t reassuring at all.

“Please, mother, stop. You’re just scaring me…”

Maeve cocked her brow.

“You should know better that most of the times prophecies sound scary and dark instead of reassuring. You’re not Ælfrith, aren’t you? You won’t let fear have the upper hand. I didn’t mean to scare you, just...I just want you to be strong. Always. Now go”, she said, kissing her goodbye on the heated forehead and slightly pushing her towards Omar, who was politely staring away while they shared some last moments together. When she was about to turn away, she felt Hilda’s hands on her shoulders, their firm grip full of anxiety and need.

“Mother, wait...just...just a moment…”

Hilda was utterly surprised by her own words. She had always been sure she would have never looked back, when she fantasized about leaving. When her relationship with her mother was at its lowest she had, in facts, thought that leaving her would have felt like freeing herself from an unbearable burden, a blessing from the Goddess herself. Now that she was leaving for real, however, she couldn’t feel more attached to that weird mother of hers, a woman she had always seen so eerie and distant, sometimes completely un-motherly and some other times as caring as a mother hen with her newborn chicks.

She had never thought she would have felt so lost while leaving her mother, but now she was...it wasn’t exactly the way she had thought for ages she would have reacted.

Finally she was aware of how strangely connected she and her mother were, how much she thought she still needed her mother’s sometimes twisted guidance, her odd wisdom.

Maeve, who seemed to know what she was thinking, placed her hands on her hips, softly pushing her away.

“The more you think that you need me, the more you grow scared. There’s nothing more that I can teach you, dove, just go. The Goddess will take care of you and, if it pleases her, we shall meet again”, she said, smiling fondly. Hilda only nodded, then Omar gently tugged at her arm, his dark eyes glowing in the bright sunlight.

“It’s time”, he said, in a thick-accented saxon.

“Go”, mouthed Maeve and Hilda finally waved her hand.

_ She couldn’t articulate a proper farewell, so she just settled for that silent goodbye. _

Straightening her back, she shoot Omar a determined look and marched at his side on the boat, where Ivar awaited with a slightly worried look on his face.

“I’m ready”, she said.

When she gave a last glance to the crowd, she couldn’t spot her mother’s raging red head, nor her stolen carriage.

A nervous laugh escaped her lips as the boat, still anchored to the wooden piers, rocked under her feet.

  
  
  
  


_ A dove must learn how to fly on her own. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone who followed me through this journey. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for having left kudos, for your bookmarks and your lovely comments. I mean it.  
> This is the first work I have finished since 2006, when I started writing, so I don't know, am I supposed to down a bottle of Champagne or something? The answer is yes, when in doubt, drink.  
> A little note: since I started writing, I knew Hilda's story couldn't end like this, so I'm going to add this work as part one of a series  
> \- Following the Wind, how original of you, Camille! - and I'll start uploading the sequel soon. It's going to be based on the events of the last two episodes of season 4b and the whole season 5, as an alternate universe like this one is.  
> Please, forgive my loquacity, and I really hope you enjoy this chapter and the forthcoming sequel.
> 
> Thank you, again.
> 
> Camille
> 
> (This work is dedicated to Ellie, light of my life and one of the best friends I've had so far. Moglieh, parte di questa storia la devo a te <3 )


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